Auschwitz - Krakow Poland Oct 7, 2009

This entry is about the sad concentration camps at Auschwitz, Poland.


Here are some photos of Auschwitz Poland. We were not allowed to take photos inside the buildings.



Auschwitz

We stepped off the bus and quietly gathered in the lobby of the Auschwitz museum. The smell of death hung heavy in the air. A quick stop at the restroom where we paid 1 zloty (35 cents) for the use of a spotless toilet was a contrast to the conditions we would see that the victims of the death camps experienced.

We took our tickets and a head phone with battery pack that was used throughout the tour of the camps so the guide could let us know the history in English. It made the experience even more introspective as you could listen to the guide from quiet a distance away and still view the area. The place is a very somber experience as this is the largest cemetery in the world where 1.5 million people were killed brutally by gas, burned, shot or staved to death.

The guide would explain what we would be seeing in the brick buildings that were once the confined sleeping quarters for the prisoners and then we would walk single file through the buildings. Other visitors gathered through-out the grounds listening intently to their guides. Many groups of children ages 12 and up were also visiting the camps. It is a requirement for all Polish children to visit.

Once we viewed the double barbed wire fences and a large black and white photo of the band who welcomed the prisoners we went inside the first building to see some more photos and learn more about how this atrocity happened. We could take photos on the grounds, but none inside. At such a sobering experience it was more personal and something that maybe one didn’t want to snap a photo. I did have the thought about what they might be hiding inside that we couldn’t photograph as this is such an important event that no one should question the reality of it happening.

The camps were first set up for Polish intellectuals and leaders who were causing trouble in Poland to quiet them. Then Hitler had this as a solution to the Jewish problem in the Polish ghettos in Warsaw and Jews from other countries that had gathered in Poland. His solution was to exterminate them. The Germans murdered 1,000 people a day.

People were sent to the camps in crowded rail cars. They were told lies about jobs being available and spas for relaxing, when in fact the purpose for the camps was to kill them. The Germans sorted the people into group. One group was immediately sent to death. They were told to take off their clothes for a clean shower and then a large dinner when in fact they were stripped of their clothes and marched to the death chambers. The other group became the workers in the camps.

One building we entered hung heavy with the smell of items almost seventy years old from 1940 to 2009. We walked silently by display cases of two tons of human hair that had been ripped or cut off the heads of the victims. Every color of hair was mixed in a tangled mess. This hair had been removed from some of the bags that the German’s had prepared for sale by the gram. According to our guide many of the buildings housing the materials confiscated from the victims were burned when the war ended to hide the evidence.

Another building had rooms with display cases with piles of glasses, another room with a twenty foot display case of shoe, clothes or hair brushes and pile of toothbrushes. One room had a twenty or thirty foot display case of shoes. Looking at every style of men’s, women’s and children’s shoes knowing that they individuals had been stripped of their hopes and dreams and suffered an unconscionable death, brought sadness to your heart.

We gathered outside the buildings with our own thoughts. A little girl age 12 in our group was waiting for her Mom to come out. I went to her and express my feelings of sadness.
She said she had read about Auschwitz at school, but seeing it in person brought the reality of the event to light.

Another building showed us the prisons and small areas of confinement. One room about 3 feet by 3 feet was used to torture the prisoners. Many people (about 9) were crowded into those small rooms and made to stand up, body-to-body for days at a time with only a small opening about the size of a folded sheet of notebook paper at the top of the room for air.

Sleeping conditions crowded 16 or more people on filthy straw in units stack like bunk bed no bigger than a double bed. Another camp we visited showed the horrible sanitary conditions the people endured with open pit toilet only inches from each other. People had but 10 seconds to take care of their business before they had to go out and work long days with little or no food.

We went into the gas chambers and in my mind I heard the screams of the dying victims of this mass murder. Another room was used to burn the victims. Black soot was apparent on the roof of this room.

This was a sad experience to visit these camps, but one that was necessary to put things in perspective. Hitler was a charismatic leader with many blind followers. For me it is always important to question charismatic people and activities.

Itineary:



An optional excursion to Auschwitz can be arranged ( additional cost )
Overnight in Krakow.