OSWIECIM, Poland -- About 50 Soldiers from the 588th Brigade Engineer Battalion, 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, experienced a sober piece of Polish history when they visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and death camps on Feb. 18.
A week before the visit, Karolina Jackowska, a Polish citizen in Boleslawiec, where the battalion is headquartered in support of Atlantic Resolve, asked Soldiers if they learned about the Holocaust in school. She was pleased to know that they do, and the question served as a springboard to experience history in person the following weekend.
"Reading about it in books and seeing it are two very different things," said Pvt. Klinton Whitmire, a combat engineer with Company B who was one of the Soldiers who took a bus tour to the historic camps near Krakow.
While making the 3 1/2 hour ride from Boleslawiec, Soldiers were given a refresher lesson on the history of the Holocaust by Capt. Mark Dwyer, an intelligence officer with the BEB.
As they entered the first building at the Auschwitz Main Camp, Dwyer noted a quote from philosopher George Santayana on the wall: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Tour guides led the Soldiers first through the main camp, Auschwitz I. They learned that not only were more than 1 million Jews killed there, all of their possessions were stolen by the Nazis as well.
"The reality of this horror was almost impossible to realize," said Pvt. Jacob Debach, a Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear (CBRN) reconnaissance platoon specialist with Headquarters and Headquarters Company.
"Especially being there and seeing their pictures and actual hair and shoes after being gassed or burnt alive because of religion, race, beliefs. It was a different feel just stepping onto that ground when I first arrived," said Debach.
Unlike the past, the BEB Soldiers now are part of an Atlantic Resolve mission that seeks to preserve the liberties of Polish citizens. The 3/4 ABCT's 9-month rotation in Poland and seven other allied nations focuses on maintaining a persistent presence that deters aggressive acts that could potentially lead to a repeat of history in Europe.
At Auschwitz the Soldiers walked through rooms filled with the Holocaust victims' eye glasses, suitcases, shoes, combs, and dishes.
After the tour of Auschwitz, the Soldiers visited the Birkenau death camp -- 500 acres of barracks that were once filled with Jews who died due to inhumane living conditions or were exterminated in the gas chambers.
Immediately following the tour, not much was said as the Soldiers contemplated what they'd seen.
"Today I walked where they walked their last steps. I saw where they lived, where they slept, what they wore, where they suffered and died," said Pfc. Cynthia Medina, a combat engineer with HHC.
During the tour, Polish TVN 24 reporter Olga Poreba spoke to the Soldiers while broadcasting a story about their impressions visiting the camps.
"I think for many Poles your visit to Auschwitz is a very important and symbolic gesture," Poreba said.
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