In Europe

everything, no problem.’
    For her there is, in fact, only one problem: the strangling boredom that has had the town in its grip the last few years. Most of the shop windows now contain only dusty book bags, macramé goods and cheap dinner settings. Oświeęcim today has 50,000 inhabitants, but no form of higher education. ‘We have to go to Krakow for everything.’ Jobs are scarce, and tourism at the camp is declining as well. Far fewer Americans have come to Auschwitz this year, they say it's because of the war in Kosovo. The walls along the streets are full of anarchist symbols and Celtic crosses.
    ‘Of course I think about it sometimes,’ Adriana says. ‘Especially when I'm in the museum. It's not taboo, you know. ‘Oh well, that was back then,’ that's what my parents always say. Everyone here knew what was going on in the camp, you could see it, or smell it at least. But no one thinks about that any more. If you did, you'd go crazy. And you have to live your life, and life here is hard enough as it is.’
    I ask her about the people who visit the camp. She blurts out: ‘You don't hear anything from the real victims and their families. But youshould see the rest of the people who come here.’ She tells me about women's clubs with tambourines, gurus who come to drive out the evil spirits, sobbing American ladies who come here to deal with past lives, classes of schoolchildren with Polish flags, classes of schoolchildren with Israeli flags, the French, Belgian, Dutch and Italian tour companies that offer a ‘three-camp tour’, starting in Krakow. ‘They all claim Auschwitz for themselves. They've never suffered for a moment themselves, but my, how they'd like to hitch a ride with the real victims! It's enough to make you sick.’

Chapter THIRTY-TWO
Auschwitz
    I HAD BEEN IN AUSCHWITZ ONCE BEFORE, AS A RADIO REPORTER IN January 1995, during the memorial services for the fiftieth anniversary of the camp's liberation. I remember getting lost at the end of one dark winter afternoon in the wooded area behind the Birkenau complex. I stumbled upon a hamlet there, like so many in Poland: chickens, geese, a dog on a chain, three old women and a farmer sitting on his wagon. To my right lay the concrete remains of Crematorium III. To the left were the ponds where the ashes were thrown: later on, ashes and bones were dumped all over these woods. A few patches of snow glistened among the trees, and a thin layer of yellowish ice floated on the quiet surface of the ponds.
    Straight ahead of me were the masts of the satellite dishes, cables had been laid across the former gas chambers and bright conversation could be heard from the trailers where the television crews were sitting. When I turned and looked again, I saw a farm that must have been there all those years. The window was brightly lit, through it I saw a living room, a table, a carpet and a stove, outside the house a clothes line and a child's bike lying on its side. From there to the crematorium was no more than 300 metres.
    How much did people know? What did the neighbours, the suppliers, the railway engineers and the civil servants know? And how much
could
they have known? And how much did they
want
to know?
    Later, in the camp museum at Majdanek, I came across a letter from the Technisches Büro und Fabrik H. Kori GmbH, Dennewitzstrasse 35, Berlin, specialists in
Abfallverbrennungsöfen aller Art
. The letter was dated 25 October,1941, and addressed to SS-Obersturmführer Lenzer in Lublin. The letter deals with plans to build a number of incinerators at the camp, plus an adjacent changing room and disinfection centre. ‘Our drawing on page 2 CJ no. 9079 shows the solution for the problem of accommodating five crematorium ovens, with number 5 in the middle intended as backup installation.’
    It is a letter that will not stop haunting. Like the invoice beside it: addressed to the Paul Reimann firm in Breslau, 100 marks for 200 kilo of human hair at 50 pfennigs a kilo. There is no denying it: thousands of people actively took part in the Holocaust, from a distance. As noted earlier: in thousands of busy offices in Berlin alone, the administration activities went on day in and day out. At SS headquarters, at the finance ministry and the
Reichsbank
, huge quantities of jewellery, clothing and other personal possessions were registered and redistributed. Dozens of local people at the Prussian mint were involved in melting down gold fillings. Banks and