Elegant Elbe: Day 5
Day 5: Thursday, November 02, 2023 - Kraków, Poland
The day's statistics:
- Weather: low 60s, sunny
- Steps: 17,749 Linda; 19,107 Steve
- Miles traveled (approximately): 103
Our excursion departed at 7:30, so we went to breakfast with everything we needed so we wouldn't have to rush back to the room.
Breakfast was the buffet at the hotel again.
I missed this the first day, but this seems to be a fast and convenient way to put out honey - it also saves on jarring.
We sat at a small table for two again.
After breakfast, while gathering in the lobby waiting to board the bus, I saw this quote on the wall in the bar seating area.
We headed out to our first excursion which was about an hour away. On the way, we saw some sights, including a cemetary or four
(one was particularly large) that were still adorned with flowers from All Saints' Day the previous day.
Most of the excursion we take are, shall we say, "positive", or maybe "uplifting". They may be to celebrate a
country's food - like last night's tasting tour, or to a winery, or to a castle, a palace, a museum or church.
Today's excusion was going to be a little different. Most of our walking tours are to learn about history and this one
was no different. However, it is the content of the history that we were learning that was going to be the challenge.
Today's excursion was going to be to "Auschwitz & Birkenau" (the Jewish concentration camps).
This can - and is - a difficult subject for some to deal with. While there are #*@!ing morons that will deny it even
happened, we do not fall into that category. If someone does, I feel sorry for them (they probably believe the Earth
is flat or the moon is made of Swiss cheese).
Anyway, Linda and I had a discussion about how to handle documenting this part of our trip. I feel it is important to
provide as much information as possible, while she would rather not "relive the experience" (I'm not saying I am anxious
to relive it either, but I would still like to have all this available for reference). Here is my compromise.
All the information I gathered and photos that I took are below. But in order to see them, the section where they are must be
expanded. This will allow it to still be read and viewed by anyone that might want to see it, or completely skipped if not.
| SHOW AUSCHWITZ | ▼ |
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We arrived in Oświęcim, the town where Auschwitz is located. We debused, and headed to the rest rooms. We then queued up, along with a LOT of other groups. We had tickets for 9:00, but there were some groups that visibly had tickets for 9:30 that insisted on pushing ahead of ours. We eventually passed through security, and walked through a hallway to a room where we met our on-site guide, Arthur, and picked up the location's equivilent of QuietVoice®. We proceeded down a series of long hallways while some of the names of those that were killed were read over a loudspeaker. The first buildings we passed were guard quarters and towers. Then the main gate. The retaining barrier was two electrified, double sided, barbed wire fences with a gap between them. We weaved through the camp, viewing the vast layout of retention centers, guard towers, and other buildings. The first block we entered was Block 4. The purpose of preserving the camps and documenting the related atrocities is directly related to this quote on the wall when entering Block 4. It isn't to "celebrate" what happened, but to remind everyone what happened in hope that it will never happen again. This map shows the various regions that the Jews were taken from and sent to the camp. This plaque summarizes the extent of the impact the camp had. This urn symbolizes the loss of life at the camp. There were some historic photos showing some of the Jewish men, women, and children that were taken. In the first picture below, the Jews arrived by train in Birkenau. In the second, a Nazi can be seen looking at the line of Jews and pointing in one direction - this was the selection process that the captures went through and the selection process was to send them to one camp to be put to work, or to another camp to be put to death. Further, the men and women were also separated. A model of one of the gas chambers the Nazis used to murder captives. A collection of canisters which contained Zyklon B, a pesticide used for killing victims in the gas chamber. A picture and a model showing two different ways the Nazis disposed of the dead bodies - burning them in a field or in a crematorium. We passed through one room that contained some human remains, and locks of hair, but out of respect for the deceased, we were asked not to take pictures. I wholeheartedly honored the request. Collections of some of the items taken from the victims including eyeglasses, tallits (prayer shawls), crutches and artificial limbs, and cups and bowls. There were also collections of pairs of shoes - two-hundred thousand in all, and luggage. The luggage has names and other identification marks on it because some of the Jews were led to believe that they were "traveling" and would be coming back. Looking out a window. We finally left Block 4 and continued our history lesson. In another block, there were some prisoner outfits on display. There were also prisoner pictures on display. While prisoners at Auschwitz were tattooed, they also wore badges for easy identification. The pictures of these men show the date the victim was captured, and the date they were executed. The pictures of these women and children - yes, children - also show the dates of their capture and execution. One of the blocks we did not enter was Block 10. Block 10 was where various chemical tests were performed on the prisoners. Sometimes the victims dies. Sometimes they were blinded or otherwise disfigured, brutalized, or marred. We left this Block and proceed to Block 11. Block 11 was considered a penal block, and most prisoners never left this Block. Alive. The windows were bricked up. An example of an SS Guard's office. An example of the cramped quaters for the prisoners. In the basement of this block there were three special types of cells in the basement, a couple in this historic photo. The three types were: a small stand-up cell for four prisoners, a suffication cell - a cell with no ventilation, and a starvation cell. Photos were not permitted to be taken in the basement. Prisoners disrobed in this room, before being taken outside to be executed - with a shot to the back of the head - against the execution wall. The crematorium was on the other side of the camp. So the deceased bodies were brought all the way across the camp to be disposed of. After reflecting in this alley, we returned to the camp's main road, and continued on. The booth where the SS guard responsible for conducting rollcall and collecting reports on the number of prisoners would take shelter during inclement weather. As a scare tactic, when one prisoner was caught trying to escape, ten more would be executed as a discouragement to the others. The spot where the first commandant of Auschwitz was hanged here after the Polish Supreme National Tribunal tried him and sentenced him death. We then entered a gas chamber, with the opening where the gas was dropped into the chamber. As many as 700 victims would be in the chamber at one time, and thousands were murdered in this chamber. Outside the chamber were furnaces to dispose of the bodies. The tour of Auschwitz was finished, but the history lesson of the tragedy wasn't over. We returned to the bus and took the 2.3km (1.4 miles) trip to the Birkenau camp. It only took a couple minutes to get between the two, but the prisoners were forced to walk between the two. |
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| SHOW BIRKENAU | ▼ |
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Though the Auschwitz camp was big, this camp was probably bigger. There were almost 300 buildings at this location, most used for housing. When the liberators - primarily the Russains at this time - were coming to free the captees, the nazis attempted to destroy the barracks to try to hide what they did. Only the chimneys remained from those barracks that were attempted to be destroyed. The barracks were constructed out of bricks and wood. Until they ran out of bricks. The roads within the camp were rough cobblestone. The prisoners had to run - not walk, but run - within the camp, and while wearing wooden shoes. So even when the prisoners weren't being put to work, they still had challenging lives and horrible living conditions. A bomb shelter - for the nazi guards. The barracks held between 400 and 600 prisoners. Even though the buildings were poorly constructed and snow would infultrate the inside, the preferred bunk to sleep in was the top one because it was the cleanest. Due to the poor health of the prisoners, they would sometimes soil themselves at night, in their beds, and it would, of course, effect anyone sleeping below them. There was one barrack used for sanitation purposes. So regardless of the weather, temperature, or time of day, anyone would have to go to the one barrack - and the time a prisoner had to use said barrack was usually short. Getting a job working in the sanitation barrack was actually considered a positive because the prisoners on the work detail would actually be able to take rest breaks because there was no way a guard was going to go into the building to check on them. An original train car that carried prisoners into the camp. This is the spot in the historic picture from the Auschwitz seciton where the jews first got off the train, before the separation process. The second image of this spot is from later in the tour, from the outside of the camp. We crossed the tracks and entered another section of the Birkenau camp. We entered Barrack 25, another barrack where the prisoners were packed in. This was considered the "death barrack" - the barack where prisoners would go to be put to death. But they would hold the prisoners in the barrack until there were two thousand of them because that was the capacity of the gas chamber, and they didn't want to waste the chemical. This was another tightly packed quarters, and there was barely any light. But they weren't held there for their comfort... While some prisoners were put to death, others were literally worked to death. Each of the bunks in the first image would hold three to five prisoners - and the same problem described above for sleeping in the upper bunk would still apply here. On the way out we passed some memorial candles. This was the last section of railroad that most of the jews and other prisoners ever traveled on. We returned to the parking lot and boarded the bus and started our journey back - which was unusually quiet most of the way. |
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Our history lessons on the attrocities of the camps was over. We boarded the bus and headed back to the hotel.
This is supposedly a movie studio set.
The bus returned to the hotel at about 2:30.
We decided to take a walk to the market square. We first stopped by the Church of St. Wojciech first. It is as small as it looks.
After a brief stop in the Church of St. Wojciech, we walked a little further down the market square to St. Mary's.
We saw the main altar, and a side altar.
After the fairly short visit in St. Mary's, we headed to the market mall next.
We browsed around the mall and purchased a couple souveniers.
We continued walking in the square, and decided to stop and get a Starbucks® because we had an earlier than usual start this morning,
and still had a few hours to go. We bought our coffee - without using our giftcard because they aren't accepted in Europe -
and sat in the enclosed outdoor seating area to relax and people watch for a little.
After our coffee break, we headed toward the hotel, but rather than proceed down the path we took a number of other times, we took
a slightly different route, going down the street between the two we already were on. We passed this unusually named shop.
At the end of the street, though, there was... another church - and this one was a basilica, Saint Francis of Assisi Basilica,
built in the mid-thirteenth century by the Fransciscans who have resided [t]here since.
It was a little dark inside.
We walked through the churh and out the front door.
We arrived back at the hotel - with our bus out front - a saw this carriage passing by.
We went to our room and spent a little time preparing for tomorrow's departure because we were going to have a bit of a late night tonight.
After our visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau, we sort of needed a mental adjustment.
Our evening's excursion - departing at 6:15 - was the "Klezmer Folk Music Performance and Dinner".
We took the bus back to the same spot we got off the bus the previous day. We walked into town a couple blocks, and down one to the Ariel restaurant.
We proceeded upstairs to a rather private area. Our group sat in one entire section, but there were two other couples that sat in the other section
before the night was over.
We sat with Lidiette and Randall from Arizona.
We had a three course meal consisting of verdisoka soup (a beef and vegetable soup); turkey filet with raisen sauce, potato pancake, and a cole slaw
sort of salad and marinated shredded carrots; and pasha cheese cake with fresh fruit.
We - and the other two couples that joined us - were treated to an evening of Klexmer Folk music played by a trio.
The trio played nine songs in all. There was no program, and I have no idea what any of the songs were - but they were still
entertaining. I rested the camera on my knee and recorded away.
It was a busy and, shall we say, stressful day.
We relaxed, washed up, and went to bed.