Kraków; Sunday, 04 June, 2006

Up early this morning to head to the station and the train to the small town of Oswiecim, some 65KM west of Kraków for a day trip by myself. The town has had a relatively important past, once being the seat of power for the region, but it’s more recent history has put it more firmly on the map than possibly any other town on the planet. It is more commonly known by the German-ification of its name – Auschwitz.

Auschwitz itself is many camps spread over a massive distance, but the two that most people know about are Auschwitz I on the outskirts of the town and Auschwitz II – Birkenau about 3KM North West of the original. The Poles originally built the first camp as an army barracks in the 1920’s but was requisitioned by the SS after they invaded in 1939. The second camp was built by camp prisoners and opened by 1941. By 1944, at its height the camp was killing thousands of, mostly, Jews each day. Walking around the sites and looking at the size you can start to get a grasp of the size of what happened here.

Both sites are now part of a UNESCO world heritage site and form part of a free museum, however, to appreciate the sites more it is recommended to take a tour, which run at least twice daily in English and other languages. I joined the 11am tour which started with a 15 minute film taken by the red army soldiers when they liberated the camps in January 1945. Some of the images of the living are possibly more horrific than the images of dead bodies. Due to the number of people visiting for the English tour five separate groups were taken round, starting in different places. My tour group started by boarding the bus to Birkenau.

The first thing that strikes you about the camp is its sheer size. Almost as far as you can see are sentry points and barbed wire (today without the electricity that ran through it). The next site is probably the most famous, the “Gate of Death” watch tower with its train line passing underneath it. The guide takes about 90 minutes to walk you around a small portion of the site, showing the horrific conditions that camp prisoners were kept in, not just physical but also mental with the random violence and death that was inflicted.

The tour ends at the end of the railway track, almost a kilometre from the watchtower, where two of the four gas chambers/ crematoriums were located. They were blown up the retreating SS just days before the camp was liberated, but the remains have been left as they were found. Today, between the sites of the ruins, and directly at the end of the railway tracks is the memorial to the Holocaust. Its words, written in most of the languages of people who died at the site possibly make the most moving testament to the site – “For ever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, where the Nazis murdered about one and a half million men, women and children, mainly Jews from various countries of Europe. Auschwitz – Birkenau 1940-1945”

The tour is taken back on the bus to Auschwitz I where the tour continues. The first part of the tour takes you through the background to the site, and the history of its creation before walking underneath the famous cynical gate sign “Arbeit Macht Frei” – “Work makes you free” and into the camp. Unlike Birkenau where most of the buildings have gone almost all the buildings remained at Auschwitz. Many of the buildings have been turned into memorials for each nationality or group who were killed at both parts of the camps (along with Jews the Nazis also tried to wipe out Gypsies and Homosexuals as well as killing many thousands of Poles, Hungarians, French and other nationalities). Several have also been turned into museums to explain what conditions the people held here suffered.

The tour then goes to some of the blocks that house what the SS hoarded. Anything that was of use was kept. In one room a pile of luggage, in another shoes, a mangled pile of glasses and, possibly the most distressing, human hair, mostly from the victims of the gas chambers which was cut off to be sent to Germany for turning into textiles.

The final two stops on the tour are the cell block and finally the gas chamber/crematorium. This is the only one of the five built at Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau which survived. It was used from 1940 up until the opening of the four larger complexes at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1941, but still lead to the deaths of countless thousands of people. One room was the “Shower room” and then next door was the crematorium. Despite being a gutted space it still gives out a feeling of utter evil, standing in a space where thousands of people died in an almost mechanical fashion gives you a completely different view on life, and the importance of it.

The visit is possibly one of the most distressing and emotionally upsetting places I have ever been to, but at the same time is such an important place for people to go to.

Emotionally drained I caught the train back to Kraków to meet back up with my friends for dinner before heading back to the hotel to pack