I am sorry to start my stories for Krakow with this one.But I have always felt somehow over-empathic with the Holocaust story. And the concentration camps were a place I definitely wanted to visit, although Mimka was trying to convince me it was no use to spoil my great mood with such a gloomy place.
Yet, I do not regret, although it was quite a distressing and tiring journey.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp is some two hours drive away from Krakow, I was travelling with an old bus that did not have proper air-condition and was stopping to pick up people literally every 10th minute. Well, that was some way of getting "into the atmosphere", I guess.
When we finally reached, I was quite surprised to see how touristic the place is. Indeed - I dunno why I should be surprised - I should have expected that.
Yet, my perception of the camps, created from watching black-and-white movies and pictures was of a gloomy, dark and lonely place. Well, with all the tourists - it wasn't. The weather was also quite nice, the surroundings - green (in fact, the Nazi propaganda had made pictures of the area, presenting prisoners sitting on the grass, eating and chatting - to convince the mass that Auschwitz was a relatively nice place to be). I guess it would be much more touching if I went during winter, when it is freezing and gloomy.
Anyways - I am happy to have taken the guided tour, as our guide really showed us the most important things and I learned a lot (although I considered I knew pretty much on the topic).
The tour started at Auschwitz, which is comprised of brick barracks and now each of these barracks has an exhibition of some of the evidence from the Nazi atrocities. There are some of the personal belongings of Jewish people and prisoners - piles of shoes, suitcases, glasses, even kitchen utensils. These Nazi bastards were so utilitarian that they used the womens hair to make fabrics. And when the guide said they even used the clothes of the children they have sent to the gas chambers to dress-up their own kids - that really gave me the shivers! She also showed us the cells were prisoners were kept (in the camps there were prisoners - mostly intellectuals, or people fighting against the Nazi and all the rest - the inmates were sent there simply because they were Jewish, gay, Gypsies or just didn't appeal to the Nazis)No windows, something like 1 sq. meter of space - to punish the ones that try to help a fellow prisoner or simply do not manage to come on time for the morning camp roll-call.
They also showed us the only one gas chamber left - the smallest one (the Nazi build other two in Birkenau, as this one was so insufficient, but just before liberation they set them on fire). Gloomy place, smelling of death. Here, as well, they used EVERYTHING that can be used from the dead bodies - ashes, golden teeth (around 5 kilos of dental gold were sent to Deutche bank monthly)...This is so inhumanly utilitarian...reaching to monstrosity!
The tour ended with a short documentary on the liberation of the camps and then we headed to Birkenau, some 3 km away form the mother camp.
At first it didn't exist at all, but when the "Jewish question" was to be solved the Nazi started building it. Compared to Auschwitz it is huge, yet only several of the wooden barracks are left, all the others were demolished by the Nazi or the Russians. There, in Birkenau, people lived in an incredible living conditions, deprived of everything , even basic stuff necessary for surviving. That is why they lived averagely only 6 to 8 months...
I once again got the shivers when we went into the barrack. No heating, no proper isolation - they were freezing in the winter. Sleeping by tens in narrow wooden banks. No showers. Huge rats.
This was really depressing.
And the feeling to stand at the platform where families were separated, lies were told that "you must take a shower" and people sent immediately to death in the gas chambers. I walked the "road of death" that lead to the gas chambers.
Nothing to say at that point.
The place is so full of grief and evidence of incredible cruelty that I even couldn't feel sad. It is just so huge that my mind refused to accept that someone actually did that to more than 1 million human beings.
The thing is - it was not the only case in history for such atrocities. Stalin did the same in Russia, in Bulgaria during the communism there were camps as well...Now,genocide is still alive in some places around the world.
Sadly, human nature has remained so cruel and primitive as it was thousands of years ago.
Labels: moods, travel
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