Warning! This post is pretty depressing! If you aren't in a mood to hear about the Auschwitz death camp, skip to the pretty pictures of Krakow at dusk at the end.
For everyone else, the second day of our trip to Poland in late April was dedicated to making the hour-and-a-half trip out of Krakow to Auschwitz. Visiting a death camp is, of course, anything but fun - however, seeing as we were living in Germany, where the memory and lessons of the Holocaust live on today, we knew it was a trip we had to make.
Auschwitz took shape in 1940, although the mass killings of Jews didn't begin until the second, larger Auschwitz-Birkenau compound was completed nearby in 1942. By the time the two camps closed in 1945, they had claimed the lives of nearly 1.5 million victims.
The crowd of tourists at the original, older Auschwitz camp was overwhelming, so we started our visit at the second camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau. Auschwitz-Birkenau had worse living conditions (think little water and plenty of rats) and was also the location of the gas chambers. The place is enormous - by the time we had completed our walking tour of the grounds, we had trekked about 7 miles over the course of 2 hours.
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| The infamous entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau, known as the Death Gate. Trains with windowless cattle cars crammed with prisoners passed through the gate and left carrying nothing except goods stolen from inmates. For some, the train ride lasted 7 or even 10 days. No food was provided, and many perished before even reaching Auschwitz |
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Most Jews entering through the gate thought they were just being "resettled" to new plots of land or being sent to work in factories. Accordingly, they brought all their most valuable possessions with them
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| Just a small portion of the camp. Most buildings are no longer standing, but the fences still are |
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| The fantastic weather did not fit at all with the depressing sights we were seeing |
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| Here, I'm standing at the notorious site where Jews were "selected" - those who were young, fit, and ready to work were sorted into one line. The rest of the new arrivals (about 70%) were deemed too frail, directed to a second line, and marched straight to the gas chambers. Meanwhile, Dr. Joseph Mengele stalked through the crowd and drew aside anyone unfortunate enough to catch his attention (especially twins). These unlucky prisoners became the victims of his cruel medical experiments |
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| Travel buddy Sarah provides some scale next to prisoner bunks. Three to five people had to share each level |
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| Washroom |
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| The barrack that once stood here housed more than 200 Jewish children, mostly twins, who were used for Mengele's cruel medical experiments |
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| When the SS picked out prisoners they saw as unfit for further work, they brought them to a separate "Death Barrack" to await execution. This was the Death Barrack for female prisoners, who stayed here for up to several days without food or water |
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| Prisoners never washed their thin outerwear and could hardly ever clean their underwear. Wearing the same clothes for months on end allowed diseases like typhus, typhoid fever, and scabies to spread. Adding to the horrific sanitary conditions were barracks like this one - as you can see, the structure was build directly on the ground, and the floor is nothing but dirt |
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| The green meadows and colorful flowers provide a strange contrast to the terrible history of this place. The prisoners performed much of the construction labor involved in expanding the camp, forced to work at a running pace despite their constant state of starvation |
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| Still more rubble left behind by the Nazis. This was a crematorium |
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| The International Monument to the Victims of Fascism, unveiled in 1967 |
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| This is all that remains of one of the two gas chambers at Auschwitz (the second is also destroyed). Prisoners were led underground, told to undress for a bath, and shepherded into a giant room that fit 2,000 at a time. Zyklon B rather than water poured in from the ceiling, and everyone died within 20 minutes |
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| I love this shot. We were all the way at the very back edge of the camp, totally alone. A breeze passed through the trees as we came across a serene meadow dotted with flowers. The scene was silent and peaceful. But despite the tranquility, the sight of a guard tower reminded us of the grim history behind this place. The meadow may be pretty, but piles of corpses were burned here in the open air when the crematoria were over capacity |
Having finished our tour through Auschwitz-Birkenau, we took a short ride back to Auschwitz I, the first of the two components of the camp to be built. Even though it was a place of unimaginable suffering, Auschwitz I honestly did not appear as gray, lifeless, and depressing as I was expecting. As opposed to the long, low, and unsteady brick and wood buildings at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Auschwitz I has two-story, solid brick living blocks (although the bunks inside were still extremely small, and each level had to be shared between two people).
If you have not yet read Night by Elie Wiesel, a nonfictional account of his Holocaust survival story, I highly suggest you do so. Interestingly, when we was transferred from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Auschwitz I in 1944, he also found that Auschwitz I seemed (superficially) less miserable then Auschwitz-Birkenau. However, life was still horrible for the prisoners. And even though the gas chambers were located at Auschwitz-Birkenau, death was no stranger to Auschwitz I - executions carried out at a gallows in the center of the camp were common.
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| The main gate to the first, smaller Auschwitz I camp |
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| Each time prisoners left the camp to begin their day of hard labor and returned 12 hours later, they passed under the infamous inscription that translates to "Work brings freedom" |
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| Prisoner barracks at Auschwitz I appear to be much nicer than the crumbling wood buildings at Auschwitz-Birkenau, although the conditions inside could not have been much better |
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| A commemorative urn containing the ashes of some victims |
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| Empty cans of Zyklon B |
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| Confiscated eyeglasses |
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| Crutches, braces, and artificial limbs |
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| Valuables were fished out from the luggage of new arrivals and sent back to Germany |
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| The Nazis had tried to hide their crimes by burning all the buildings on the grounds, but some warehouses and the abandoned goods inside them survived |
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| More suitcases. Nearby, another display case had a huge pile of human hair, some still in braids, that the Nazis had not yet managed to sell to wig and cloth factories |
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| The most haunting display: a long hallway with display cases on both sides completely full of shoes |
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| Another look at Auschwitz I |
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| Anyone who didn't get extra food (either by smuggling some from the outside or stealing some) was doomed. What meager rations the prisoners did get was rotted and full of harmful bacteria, and rat poison was put in garbage bins to discourage rummaging through the waste for leftovers |
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| The building on the right housed offices and, in the basement, a prison (where inmates who assisted others in escaping were locked in cells and left to die from starvation). On the left is a barrack with rooms full of bunks for normal prisoners. Its windows were blocked off to prevent them from seeing what happened in this courtyard. At the "Wall of Death" at the far end of the yard, the SS executed thousands of prisoners by shooting or hanging between 1941 and 1943 |
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| A surviving gas chamber. It was used in 1941 and 1942 |
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| From the outside looking in |
It was time for us to leave the epicenter of history's most horrifying genocide. Visiting the camp helped us grasp the scale of human suffering that the Holocaust brought to Europe, and we won't be soon forgetting what we learned during our visit.
An hour and a half later, we were back in Old Town Krakow! We had just enough time to admire the main square at dusk and grab some drinks before calling it a day.
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| The main square, or Rynek Główny in Polish, is the largest medieval town square in all of Europe! It's a bustling place full of historic structures |
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| The square was first laid out in 1257, and the whole entire thing is a UNESCO World Heritage Site |
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| The church on the left is St. Mary's Basilica, which dates back to the 14th century |
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| Dinner time - we did our homework and found this hidden place called Babci Maliny, where we ate delicious traditional Polish food at ridiculously cheap prices (think 6 to 8 dollars for a full meal and beer) |
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| Entering the main square again. Everything from public executions to coronations of Polish kings took place here until the Polish capital was moved from Krakow to Warsaw in 1596, which spelled the end of Krakow's best years (although today the city is Poland's greatest tourist magnet) |
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This fancy building from 1555 is the Cloth Hall, which houses a public marketplace on its ground floor. The market had its golden age in the 1400s, when international merchants came here to trade spices, silk, leather, and wax for Krakow's textiles, lead and salt
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| More of the square, which was renamed to Adolf Hitler Square when it came under Nazi control |
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| The Cloth Hall's market (closed for the night, but we visited the next day) |
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| All these photos are just from half of the square, as the other half was taken up by a giant stage for an outdoor concert |
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| The side of the Cloth Hall |
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| The cute little building is the church of St. Adalbert, a 1000-year-old stone church |
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| That tall statue is a monument to Adam Mickiewicz, an 18th-century Romantic poet |
Boy, do I love photographing things at dusk. As you can see, I had a field day with the main square. That marked the end of our sightseeing for day two, but the best was yet to come - we saved the city's most incredible sight for our last day. Coming right up!
