70km from the City of Death

Kraków, Poland is a small, medieval looking town mildly reminiscent of Bern. The pirogies are delicious, authentic, and unbelievably cheap along with every other type of Polish food imaginable. 70 km away from this cute, bustling little town sat two much smaller towns called Auschwitz and Birkenau. At the onset of World War II, the Nazis kicked out the Polish citizens living there, destroyed their homes, and built what was to be the center of all the death camps in Europe. Our only reason for going to Poland in the first place was to see these two camps, so we headed to the smaller of the two public squares in Krakòw at 8 am—just an hour after arriving at our hostel—to meet our tour bus.

During the hour and ten minute bus ride to the camps, we watched a documentary on them and on the Holocaust on general. The film certainly was not something I hadn't seen before, but as with all Holocaust films, it set the mood and made me a bit teary eyed.

When we arrived at the site of Auschwitz, it became obvious that it had been turned into a museum and was quite the popular tourist attraction. The original entrance of the camp wasn't even visible from the parking lot or public entrance. Inside the welcome center we were all given a tour guide and a radio receiver with headphones so we could all hear what she was saying without having to crowd around her.

The camp wasn't what I was expecting. I always have wondered what it would be like to visit the place in all those horrible black and white pictures taken during the war, and even standing on the grounds themselves where all those hundreds of thousands of people died, I must admit it did nit feel like the same place. There were fields of perfectly manicured green grass everywhere, blue skies, birds chirping, tourists everywhere; certainly nothing compared to the desolation shown in those original images. The bunkers where the prisoners lived had all, with the exception of one, been converted into museum exhibits much like the ones in the Holocaust museums in Israel and Washington, DC. The one that remained almost the same, Block 11, was the penal block. If you were in the camp, you could be thrown into one of these torture cells for pretty much any reason the SS saw as valid. There were there different cells that you could be thrown into: the dark cell, the starvation cell, and the standing cell. All were equally horrible and usually ended in death.

We saw many exhibits that were similar, as I said before, to other museums. The difference here was size. I have never before seen 2000kg of human hair before, nor have I seen such a huge room filled with nothing but shoes or combs or mirrors. The tour guide was sure to remind us multiple times that what we were seeing was only a small sample of what was actually collected.

Right before the end of the Auschwitz tour, we approached a small, grassy hill surrounded by white brick. As we neared it and the hill's crest came into view, a smoke stack made itself visible rising against the sky. Around the front was a stark white wall with two doors. As we walked into Kremetorium 1, the first gas chamber in Auschwitz, I had to keep reminding myself what I was about to enter; it was all too surreal. The inside looked almost like a locker room with a dirt floor, separated into six segments without walls. In the ceiling above each of the segments was a single hole where the cyanide gas canisters were dropped. The next room contained a dolly track on the ground and two furnaces with sliding trays. Use your imagination to guess what those were used for.

We then got into the bus and drive another 5 minutes to Birkenau. This camp is totally different than Auschwitz. It is 40 times bigger and was never fully completed before liberation. The Nazis also almost completely leveled the camp before taking more than 60,000 people on the Death March as the Soviets neared. Most of the barracks, which were made of wood instead of brick like the ones in Auschwitz, were simply shallow foundations rising out of the grass. The 15 or so that remained standing were like photos out of a book. The 3-level wooden bunks and the rows of hundreds of holes carved in stone (the toilets) were exactly as I imagined. But the grass still detracted from the depressing feel I had thought I would have. Even the train tracks, where the deported prisoners arrived, seemed far too bright.

 

 

 Overall, I'm glad I got to see the camps. However, it was not the horribly depressing, moving, thought-provoking experience I had imagined. It was just far too surreal for me to feel any sort of tangible connection with the events of the past.

Back in Kraków with only one night to explore, we ate wonderful authentic Polish food for mad cheap from a restaurant frequented by locals an tourists alike right around the corner from our hostel. We also discovered an awesome little bar called the Polish Pub that was actually beneath the street. We had these shots called Mad Dog which was a small amount of raspberry sauce with tobacco and vodka layered on top in a shooter glass. They were super fantastic and I hope to be able to make them when I get back home.