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 |
