DAY 121 – Auschwitz & Atrocities

July 18 - A Day to Remember & Warning to Humanity

I started early walking to the bus stop to go to the city centre in order to catch the bus to Auschwitz.  I met a tour guide along the way who explained that I really should just go later and save a bunch of money.  If you get there before 10 a.m. or after 3 p.m., you can get in free, so that's what I set out to do.  Unfortunately, I just barely missed the bus taking me there before 10:00.

 I set out to tour the city for 3 hours.  Rich had no desire to go to Auschwitz, so he did his own thing.

Kraków's renowned Juliusz Slowacki Theatre

The Wielopolski Palace, seat of Kraków's mayor, administration and city council.

 Kraków's historic centre, which includes the Old Town, Mazimierz, and the Wawel Castle, was included as the first of its kind on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1978. The Old Town (Stare Miasto) is the most prominent example of an old town in the country.

The city's former Jewish district of Kazimierz is particularly notable for its many renaissance buildings and picturesque streets. Kazimierz was founded in the 14th century to the south-east of the city centre and soon became a wealthy, well-populated area

Kraków contains also an outstanding collection of monuments of Jewish sacred architecture unmatched anywhere in Poland. Kraków was an influential centre of Jewish spiritual life before the outbreak of WWII. There were at least 90 synagogues in Kraków active before the Nazi German invasion of Poland, serving its Jewish community of 60,000–80,000 (out of the city's total population of 237,000), established since the early 12th century.

The Old Town district of Kraków is home to about 6,000 historic cites and more than two million works of art. Its rich variety of historic architecture includes Renaissance, Baroque, and Gothic buildings. Kraków's palaces, churches and mansions display great variety of color, architectural details, stained glass paintings, sculptures, and furnishings.

I went into one of the churches and heard the most beautiful music by a group of young people.  The acoustics were outstanding.  They were preparing for a concert that evening.

Beautiful choral music rehearsal

This lion looks a bit scared - what do you think?

St. Mary's Basilica

Main Market Square

Rich enjoyed a bike ride around the area.  It's always nice when our couch surf hosts give us a bike to use.

Tours around the city anyone?

On to Auschwitz

 I finally got the two-hour bus ride to Oświęcimiu (Auschwitz).  I spent over four hours there without a tour guide - just on my own.  There are plenty of things to read along the way and much to ponder and take in. 

September 1, 1939 - German troops invaded Poland - WWII began

It all started with sixteen dilapidated one-story buildings that had once served as an army barracks and a camp for transient workers.

Auschwitz I, the original camp, became the administrative center for the whole complex

Local residents were evicted, including 1,200 people who lived in shacks around the barracks. Around 300 Jewish residents of Oświęcim were brought in to lay foundations. From 1940 to 1941, 17,000 Polish and Jewish residents of the western districts of Oświęcim were expelled from places adjacent to the camp. 

  By March 1941, 10,900 were imprisoned there, most of them Poles. By the end of 1940, the SS had confiscated land in the surrounding area to create a "zone of interest" about 40 square kilometres (15 sq mi) in area surrounded by a double ring of electrified barbed wire fences and watchtowers.

Like other Nazi concentration camps, the gates to Auschwitz I displayed the motto -Arbeit macht frei ("Work brings freedom").

I'm here - it's what I've heard about for years.

"For the non-German population in the east, there cannot be any schooling beyond the 4th grade.  The goal of such a school can only be as follows -  simple counting to 500, writing one's name, teaching that God commands servitude to the Germans, honesty, diligence, and politeness.  I do not thing reading is necessary."   Henrich Himmel

The camp orchestra played to help keep the prisoners in step and it was easier to count them to a "march" tune.

This explains Hitler's ideology

The prisoners "striped pajamas."

There were several rooms of items from the Jewish prisoners that were confiscated at either the time of their imprisonment or at the end of their time in the camp.  I only took pictures of a few of the rooms.  It is incomprehensible of the millions more items that were burned by the SS at the end of the war.  They didn't want to leave evidence of what was being done here.

Pans, bowls, cups, cooking utensils

Thousands of shoes

Luggage, bags, suitcases taken when they were admitted

Some slept on these "pillow-like" things

A memorial to all those who were shot for a "crime" performed while in the camp

"If I wanted to put up a poster for every 7 poles who were shot, the Polish forests would not be enough for such notices."     Hans Frank   
                                            November 6, 1940
                             

From Anne Frank's Diary - She died in Bergen-Bergen, another concentration camp in Germany,
of tuberculosis, in March 1945 ( so close to liberation)

There were several rows of buildings like these for different tributes to all the various countries affected by the Nazi German extermination camps.

Construction on Auschwitz II-Birkenau began in October 1941 to ease congestion at the main camp. Himmler intended the camp to house 50,000 prisoners of war, who would be interned as forced laborers. Plans called for the expansion of the camp first to house 150,000 and eventually as many as 200,000 inmates.

10,000 Soviet soldiers arrived at Auschwitz I in October 1941, but by March 1942 only 945 were still alive, and these were transferred to Birkenau, where most of them died from disease or starvation by May. By this time Hitler had decided that the Jews of Europe were to be exterminated, so Birkenau was repurposed as a combination labor/extermination camp.

I took a short bus to the Birkenau area - close to Auschwitz

 The first gas chamber at Birkenau was the "red house" (called Bunker 1 by SS staff), a brick cottage converted into a gassing facility by tearing out the inside and bricking up the walls. It was operational by March 1942.  A 2nd one was built a little while later.

Many people made attempts to escape these barbed wire fences

A communal toilette area was set up

As I walked around the grounds, it was partly cloudy and very still.  You couldn't hear any birds or sounds anywhere.  Suddenly the sun came through the clouds as if to say, "All is well now, but never forget what atrocities happened here.  Many died so that we could remember and NEVER let it happen again."

Notice the beautiful rays of sunshine lighting up the area

These were old horse/cattle stalls that were set up for the men's housing.  Designed for a few hundred, they ended up housing more than a thousand at one time.

It's crazy to think how many were forced to sleep in one bunk

This same area then and today as so many lined up, not even knowing their fate.

The RR tracks ended here at the Crematoriums

 

Crematorium II, originally designed as a mortuary, with morgues in the basement and ground-level incinerators, was converted into a killing factory by installing gas-tight doors, vents for the Zyklon B to be dropped into the chamber, and ventilation equipment to later remove the gas.

 Crematorium III was built using the same design. Crematoria IV and V, designed from the start as gassing centers, were also constructed that spring. By June 1943, all four crematoria were operational. Most of the victims were killed using these four structures.

The SS bombed these structures in an effort to hide all the evidence.

A ceremonial funeral for victims was held on February 28, 1945 near the end of the RR tracks and close to these areas.

It is estimated that about 700 Auschwitz victims rest together in a common grave - done at the end of the war.

A beautiful monument for the victims

 

I wandered over to some other barracks.  I felt the spirits of so many who lived here for years.  I met one such man on my travels here just a month ago and wondered which of these buildings he possibly spent four long years of his youth in.

I saw several walls such as this with inscriptions (not legible) and wished these walls could talk.  Maybe I'm glad they cannot and are silent as a prayer to those who lost their lives either physically or emotionally.

Stoves and chimneys are all that remain of many of the buildings.

Eight hundred to a thousand people were crammed into the compartments of each barrack.

As I was the only one touring these at the end of the day, I had the time to think about the horrible crimes being done here, the movies I had seen about the holocaust, and praying for all the souls lost.

This was one of the women's barracks

I had read where you can still smell a terrible odor, but I actually smelled fresh life, from the grass, freshly mowed...from the air that I breathed, cooled by the light breeze, and the flowers at the monument, whose fragrance was potent.

I caught the last bus back to Auschwitz (almost missed it), where I had some time before the bus back to Krakow would leave.  I wandered in another area where the commanders and officers had their headquarters.

Nice building for the German Nazi officers

I made my last stop at the original gas chambers of Auschwitz.  No words can explain what went through my mind at this time.

Interior of the crematorium of Auschwitz

Cry of despair and a warning to humanity of what the Nazis did - where 1.5 million people died.

     "The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again."  George Santayana

I waited for the mini-van to go the two hour distance back to Krakow.  More and more people came.  I thought to myself, "How are we ever going to all fit in here?"  Somehow we did.  I had the last seat in the back in the corner to the outside window.  There were wall to wall people - 3 in a seat and standing, too.  It was so hot and I couldn't get out and the window wouldn't open!  I get claustrophobia and started to panic inside.  Suddenly a voice within me said, "Just think...you have the window next to you to look outside.  You have fresh water in a bottle.  You have an apple in your bag.  You have a journal you can write in.  How can you even for a minute not be thankful for this experience?   This could be one of the Jewish trains."  I took a long, deep breath and I was able to relax and I made it home very easily after that.

There must have been 30 people packed into this little mini van

 I wrote extensively in my journal about this experience.  I closed with this paragraph.  "As I took a nice long bath tonight, I lathered up a lot of soap and felt so lucky.  I was re-born.  My dinner tasted better.  The flowers were more beautiful than ever before.  I will look at people differently, especially the Polish people.  Are they Jewish?  Do they have ancestors that perished there?  What are their stories?  We all need to communicate and love each other.  We have the privilege to be empathetic and kind and can have those eyes that look into the souls of others.  I am so grateful to my Heavenly Father for allowing me to experience this and I will forever be grateful for my heritage and to my parents who gave me life and love."