Grim and Bear it

Yikes, I wrote a ton and then Mozilla Firefox killed out on me so I lost it all.  Oh well, here goes again:

I woke up this morning at 0930, 1.5 hrs later than I had hoped.  It was okay though because I needed the extra sleep.  I guess hiking yesterday was more tiring than I thought it was for my body.  I caught a 1100 bus to Auschwitz (Osweicim) for 7 zloty.  I rode for 1.5 hrs to the Auschwitz Muzeum is, this is the same place as the concentration camp.  The government decided to preserve the entire area as a memorial to those who died in the concentration camps.  The buildings still stand and much of the interior is still in good shape.

I was able to get into the 1300 English guided tour.  It started off with a 15 minute documentary video that showed how people came to the camps and how they were treated.  The camp was initially built to house political prisoners: intellects of Poland and oppositions to the Third Reich.  Then the Nazis decided to implement their ethnic cleansing and deported so many people that they had to build Birkenau 3 km away.  Birkenau served as the death camp while Auschwitz was the concentration camp.

We walked through the main gate, above which read "Arbet Macht Frei" = "Working Sets You Free".  What an ironic and grim statement for those who were not eligible to work because they were immediately sent to the gas chambers.  We walked through the barracks and saw how they lived.  The Nazis also kept and stole a bunch of the prisoners' belongings including brushes, shoes, clothing, luggage, money, jewelry, and hair.  The hair was sold to make textiles and mattresses.  Money and jewelry were used to support the war effort.  The other items were shipped to the soldiers so that they could use it at the war front.  We saw rooms just filled with shoes, luggage, and all the aforementioned items.  The shoes room was saddest because you could see women's high heels (people thought they were going to a luxurious place, many even paid to get there), men's boots, dress shoes, and children's sandals.  Rooms twice the size of my living room were heaping with only brushes.  Another larger room held suitcases with names, birthdates, and birthplaces.  This was just as sad as the shoe room.

We were transported to Birkenau where we continued our tour.  They showed us the platform where people were sorted by who could and couldn't work.  We also saw the barracks there, much worse than those in Auschwitz.  People slept on hay and three wooden boards.  Toilets were a simple hole over the tank.  Prisoners were employed by the SS men to watch over each other.  These jobs were usually given to ex-convicted men.  They obviously held a lot of power and abused it frequently.  They decided the fates of many prisoners and could determine whether somebody worked indoors or outdoors during the winter (when most people died because of the cold = -20 degrees C).  I saw prisoner stalls that were 2'x2' so that peoplecould not sit or lie down.  They had to stand there over night and go to work the next morning.  Usually they were too exhausted to do so, and therefore they were just exterminated.  The glorious job was to shovel out the bathroom's tank because you could work indoors and out of sight of SS men who were afraid of the typhus that lingered in those rooms.

I was able to see the ruins of the crematorium and gas chamber.  They had the two integrated into one building for higher efficiency.  The Nazis blew up the building when they saw that the war was nearing its end.  The Soviet Army was able to liberate roughly 7000 people.  These were the people who were too weak and feable to walk, as ordered by the Nazis, to nearby concentration/death camps.

Apparently, for every person who escaped, they would kill 10 people who lived in the same barracks as an example and a deterant for more people escaping.

In the beginning, the Nazis took pictures of those who entered and recorded entry and death dates.  Many people didn't survive in the camps for longer than 3 months.  Their pictures hung on the walls in all of the barracks at Auschwitz.

It was a chilling and surreal experience overall.  I don't think it has completely hit me yet.  It almost seems like it was built as a tourist attraction, like a replica.  It doesn't seem possible that people could actually have gone through this horrible ordeal.  Overall, it was a great experience for me and I'm glad that I included Krakow in my itinerary.  My favorite quote from Blood Diamond was given by Leonardo DiCaprio, "Will God ever forgive us for what we've done to each other?" and definitely applies in this situation.  It's all I could think about while walking around: look at what people are capable of doing.

I came back home at 1900 and still hadn't had anything to eat.  Breakfast was a strawberry pastry and an amazing bag of Haribo  gummybears from Prague.  I had dinner at that restaurant with the burritos again.  This time I had a chicken burrito with extra spicy.  It wasn't spicy at all but it was still very tasty.  I ordered a bagel sandwich to go for tomorrow's lunch/breakfast.

I leave tomorrow at 1200 from Krakow airport via Ryanair.  I land in Frankfurt at 1400.  Then on Saturday, I leave Frankfurt at 1000 and arrive in Barcelona at 1200 to see Sacha and Pere!  I'm so excited to be with friends again!.  I will try to load pictures later tonight.  Cheers all!