Krakow, Poland

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Krakow was quite similar to Prague in its appearance and feel. I visited the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps. It was very sad and I didn't get photo's of a lot of things out of respect.

Auschwitz started as a concentration camp in 1940 for polish political prisoners and by 1942 it became the centre for the extermination of European Jews. Between 1940 and 1945 the Nazis killed about 1.5 million people.

The things you see here are very disturbing and horrifying. As you go through the prison blocks in which the prisoners were kept, they have set up an area that is sealed off by a glass wall and in here, you see all the hair that has been cut off - there is so much of it, just mountains and mountains. Lots of long women's hair still in braids. They have glass sealed areas of millions of shoes, glasses, luggage.. it is astonishing. It's hard to speak as you walk through. There are finger nail scratches on the walls and engravings the prisoners have made too. I think the most eerie part was seeing the barracks at Birkenau in which up to 10 prisoners would sleep in a small area on wooded slats (like bunk beds) - there is seriously no room to move and some people died lying there but the other prisoners would not tell anyone so they could still claim food for that person.

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Here are some of the photo's I took.