Krakow

Krakow
April 8-11

Sorry for the delay in posts, expect multiple entries within the next few days.  Lots of catching up to do!!  pictures tomorrow.  It's been a crazy few weeks.

Friday and Sunday we spent seeing Krakow.  Krakow is a small city, and easy to navigate.  Friday we walked around the parks and the city looking at all the architecture and taking in the city.  We went for a traditional Polish dinner which was good.  There were twelve of us in Krakow, and we were able to sit at a round table which was nice.  The restaurant itself was quite interesting...it was medieval, but it did the trick.

Sunday was really fun.  We saw everything in the city, did some shopping, and even took a horse and carriage ride around the city.  I'll just show you some pictures to see the city.

Saturday we went to Auschwitz.
Auschwitz is about 1.5 hrs away from Krakow, but the bus was easy to find. It says it's free, but you cannot enter without a guide, so we signed up for our tour.  The tour started at Auschwitz I.  First we watched a movie, that was really difficult.  Then we met our English guide.

Our guide was really great throughout the whole experience.  He wasn't overly dramatic in an insulting way, but for someone who gives the tours daily, he was still very solemn about everything.  We spent about two hours in Auschwitz I.  They turned many of the barracks into museum type places.  One of the barracks was full of shoes.  millions of shoes piled high.  It was overwhelming to know that each shoe belonged to someone who was treated so cruelly for no reason at all.  The next room was harder though because it was full of little shoes and clothing for babies and toddlers.  Walking around, looking at the pictures, the clothing and the shoes, it's hard not to imagine the people's faces that you care about in the faces on the wall. 


Even after, what could sometimes be two weeks, of a jammed ride in the train, the people truly believed they were being relocated.  They had no idea what was going on.  The words on the gates read "Work will set you free".  There are no words to describe any of what I saw.

Joseph Mengele was an awful man who did experiments on all the twins that entered Auschwitz.  There was a whole room dedicated to show the atrocious events. 

The prisoners of the Camps called jobs that were "the job to have" Canada jobs, because of the freedom in Canada and easy life.  Now, these jobs weren't necessarily easy, but your chances of survival were better.  In Auschwitz I the Canada job was sorting through all of the luggage in hopes of finding extra food, and being out of the weather.

The last place in Auschwitz I that we visited was the death chambers.  We actually stood inside of them, and the ovens were still there.  It's hard to think of a way to talk about Auschwitz because it was so horrific.

Then we took a bus to Auschwitz II-Birkenau.  Birkenau is 30 times the size of Auschwitz I, and it was designed primarily as a death camp.  There were 4 gas chambers. Although, here there isn't much left of the gas chambers, because they tried to destroy them once they realized they had lost the war.

There were some barracks that were the same as the ones in Auschwitz I, but the majority were wooden ones.  They were basically the design of a German horse stable that would house 52 horses.  There were never less than 450 people in one of these barracks during the war.

One of the barracks was the bathroom one.  Basically it was just a line of a bunch of holes.  They were allowed to go to the bathroom twice a day...once when they woke up, and once before bed.  That means they had to work for twelve hours straight, and were not even allowed to think about going to the restroom.  The "Canada job" in Birkenau was to shovel out the toilets.  Now, this may seem like one of the worst jobs that one could possibly end up with, but it was considered a "Canada Job" for a few reasons.  One, it was inside the wooden barracks, that meant that there was some protection from the weather.  Two, the smell was terrible and the fear of catching a disease from the rotting bowel movements (that's the best word I could fit into that sentence) kept the Nazis away, which meant no beatings for those working in the bathrooms.

Many people who had a "Canada job" had a better chance of surviving longer.  The guide said it was all about when you entered the camp.  Those who entered in the spring or summer had a better chance of surviving because if they survived the weather outside with the not so great work jobs, then come winter, they would be the ones working the "Canada jobs", whereas if you were sent to the Concentration Camps in the winter or fall, you were most likely given an outside job, and with the weather and work conditions combined, most people did not make it past the season.

When people got off the train in Birkenau they still believed, after a crowded death inducing train ride, that they were being relocated.  A man stood at the platform and told them where to go, if they even looked like they couldn't work they were sent straight to the gas chambers.  All children, mothers of small children, elderly people, and anyone incapable of work didn't have a chance of surviving.


Things about Auschwitz I didn't know that made me sick.

1.  All the Nazis that were working at the death camps were there on a voluntary basis.  Yes, many Nazis in the war were forced to fight, but there was not one Nazi in the concentration camps that wasn't there voluntarily.  They truly believed Jews were not human. 

2.  I guess I never realized how much money the Nazis made off of the concentration camps.  They sold nearly all of the Jews' belongings, including the hair that they cut off.  They sold the hair to manufactures..  After the war, they found literally tons of human hair.  It is on display in one of the barrack turned museums.