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Krakow, Poland

There’s something quite amusing about having jam sandwiches on park benches everyday and then to be partaking in the free wine and nibbles in the first class lounge in the train station for dinner – of course our backpacks fitted right in amongst the suited up train snobs on the leather seats. I must say the Austrian trains are the best to date in Europe. Trust me when I say I know our trains. The first class seats from Munich, Germany to Vienna, Austria were like business class in a plane – complete with waiter and free nibbles.

We arrived in Vienna at 5pm and saw the city in a few hours before departing for the overnight train to Krakow, Poland. Vienna is such a beautiful city. It’s getting very cold fast so the towns we now visit have this cold mist in the air, almost grey like. It’s a modern city with lots of life and music coming from every corner, hardly surprising since it was the birth place of Mozart and Beethoven. To complete the postcard, hundreds of horse drawn white carriages and men in top hats take the rich tourists around the city.

We are shockers for seeing cities and countries within a day. We are in Krakow for only 12 hours before another overnight train out. It may seem a long way to come for a short period of time but we simply had to visit the ever so important memorial of those 1.3million who lost their lives at Auschwitz and Birkenau (also know as Auschwitz 2).
Similar to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, we had heard of what went on in World War two and Hitler’s regime but we couldn’t really say we understood what scale or impact this had on the Jews, Europe and the world as a whole. Even after a 3 hour guided tour of Auschwitz 1 and 2, the topic is too huge to grasp and comprehend completely in one day.
I think this passage written on a sign I read captures the essence of it:
“Throughout the world, Auschwitz has become a symbol of terror, genocide and the holocaust. The German Forces occupied Poland during the Second World War and established a concentration camp, on the outskirts of the town Auschwitz and that is the name by which it was known. Over the next year it was expanded in to three main camps. The first people to be brought to Auschwitz as prisoners and murdered here were Polish then the Soviet prisoners of war. They were followed by the biggest mass murder campaign in history, when the Nazi put into operation their plan to destroy the entire Jewish population of Europe. The great majority of Jews were deported to Auschwitz.
When the Nazis realised that the end of the war was near, they attempted to remove the evidence of the deaths that were committed here. They dismantled the gas chambers, crematorium and other buildings, burned documents and evacuated all those prisoners who could walk to the interior of Germany. Those who were not evacuated were liberated by the Red Army on 27th January 1945. Of the 1,300,000 brought to Auschwitz only 6,500 were found alive on January 27th.”

There are many concentration camps around Europe but I wanted to come to Poland to see this one in particular. Auschwitz was the largest Nazi German concentration camp and death camp in Europe. It was classed as a central spot around Europe to bring the prisoners to. In the years 1940-1945, the Nazis made at least 1,300,000 people leave their homes and come to Auschwitz. Of them:
– 1,100,000 Jews
– 140,000 – 150,000 Polish
– 23,000 Gypsies
– 15,000 Soviet Prisoners of war
– 25,000 prisoners from other ethnic groups.
The figure that has to be remembered is that 1,100,000 of these people died in Auschwitz. Approximately 90% of the victims were Jews with most being murdered within an hour of arriving at the camp. They were stripped of their clothes and possessions and told to have a communal shower with between 800-1200 people. Water never came out of those taps in the ceiling, Cyclone B did. They were then shaved of their hair which was used for many purposes, before they were cremated and their ashes tossed. These are horrific numbers. Seeing the tonnes of human hair or kids shoes and clothes makes it all that more real.
The other people who arrived at Auschwitz, and passed the ‘sorting’ were sent to live and work in poor, terrible, horrible conditions in the camp grounds. If they eventually weren’t killed in gas chambers, it was through torture, starvation and disease. What shocked me was the control and systematic mechanisms put in place to ensure this happened.
Although Auschwitz was the largest, it was one of many, so the overall number was much higher – between 9 to 11 million people were murdered over that period.

There are many reasons why you visit a place as significant as this. To remember those who lost their lives, those who suffered and to really grasp the gravity and magnitude of this tragic time in history. I think it also makes you think about how thankful we should be to those who fought in world wars of the past and the present. Those men and woman were, and are, still fighting to stop the baddies of the world killing the goodies. Goodies like us, just normal men, woman and children who deserve the right to live in the world without being murdered because of race, gender or religion.

It was about 5pm by the time we had arrived by bus back into Krakow. It was a shame that we only have 4 hours to see such a beautiful city. The buildings are all different pastel colours. There is a green strip looping around the centre of the city, filled with huge deciduous trees. Green, red and gold, the leaves fall over a white misty city. My friend Scott was right, staying until nightfall was a must. The main plaza or square lights up accentuating the beauty in the buildings. Horse and white carriages transport people to the restaurants surrounding the square. Buskers belt opera in one corner with jazz in the other. One of the most beautiful squares in Europe.
There’s such beauty here, along side such a tragic history. Lest we forget.

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