A confronting day - visiting the Schindler Factory and Auschwitz-Birkenau
We know that today won't be as easy one. The morning starts with a stop in the Jewish district of Kazimierz, specifically the Ghetto Heroes Square where 33 Memorial Chairs sit, symbolising the tragedy of the Polish Jews who were imprisoned here in the Ghetto during WWII. Made of iron and bronze they are a stark reminder of the resolve of the Jewish people during the German occupation of Poland; so many of them went from here die in camps.
We walk sombrely through this square, sit on a seat, contemplate life here; but it's hard to envisage what it was really like.
For this, we need to go to Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory which is now a museum showcasing the difficulties of life in Krakow and the horrors that befell the citizens here. The Square was peaceful and empty, but the museum is very crowded.
It's an intriguing museum with narrow corridors which move you from room to room, from one vignette of life to the next. It's not easy to negotiate your way through the crowds, but each room is beautifully curated, capturing the difficult life and times of a city in the grip of a war and people for whom coping with hardship was a way of life. It's a very personal experience, and something of a history lesson; we come away with a real sense of life during the Nazi occupation, as well as Schindler and his List. So many enlightening bits of information, loads of haunting photos, slices of life ... we leave with more knowledge and empathy than we went in with. Must watch Schindler's List again.
From here we return to the Jewish quarter (not to be confused with the Ghetto) for lunch. There is no group lunch today, so we disperse in search of something tasty to eat. Elaine, Lynette and I find the "Hamsa Hummus & Happiness Israeli Restobar"; it looks and sounds just the ticket, so we take a seat in the shady courtyard. We order a metze plate to share and the obligatory beer. The bread is fresh and light and delicious. Yum.
It's time to head to Auschwitz. Shirley and Erice opt out but the rest of us board the bus that will take us to this place that we have known in our imagination for so many years. I've been to Dacau and Thereseinstadt (Terezin) in Czechia and, whilst "looking forward to it" isn't quite the right expression, I am eager for this visit.
Our excellent on site guide takes us to the iconic gates where those infamous words "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" arch over our heads like a ribbon of doom. It feels weird to be standing right here under this sign which today is framed by blue sky and leafy green trees. We seek shade beneath the trees, but I'm guessing they weren't flourishing here when horror was.
We enter the complex and are surprised by how orderly it all looks. Neat brick buildings in tree-lined streets, it was originally a Polish army barracks; it's not as austere or foreboding as I had imagined. Yes, there is plenty of barbed wire and an enclave of buildings that could obviously tell tales of horror, but the overall look of the place is benign. Nice, even. However, there is nothing nice about what happened here during the war years.
We go through Block 11, called "The Block of Death" by prisoners. Squalor, torture, terror and death happened right here for countless people. Outside, we see the "shooting wall".
Next door is Block 10 where women were the victims of evil sterilisation experiments conducted by Dr Carl Clauberg. We don't go inside this building but just seeing where these events took place was harrowing enough.
In Block 5 we see the belongings of those murdered - prosthetics, personal items, practical items and, most haunting of all, shoes and hair. Mountains of real hair that was removed and sold to German companies as raw material. Almost two tons of hair belonging to almost 40,000 people can be seen here at Auschwitz. Mountains of shoes that fit young and old, male and female; real shoes that belonged to real people who died right here. More than 100,000 pairs of shoes were gathered from the dead and just a fraction are on display here. Small kids' shoes stick out despite their size - no chance for the many pairs of tiny feet that wore them to grow old. Battered boots sit amongst heels that had no more outings. Shaving brushes used by old men who thought they'd carry on using them till they were truly old. Crutches used by people who thought that a buggered leg was as bad as life could get. It's utterly heart-wrenching, and a little intrusive, even voyeuristic.
We walk through Crematorium 1, sombre and respectful of those who died here when Zyklon B gas was introduced through holes in the roof. Many were killed during the experiments took place in 1941 to determine what the best chemical agent that would kill might be. This crematorium is in its original state, complete with furnaces - a combination of gas chamber and morgue, it operated as a death chamber before the main gas chambers in Birkenau were built.
From the main Auschwitz camp, we transfer the short distance by bus to Birkenau. We walk along the infamous railway line to the gate. It's surreal.
We know about the selection process, of arriving by train or wagon and being brutally shunted this way or that, to labour or death. But to hear about it within these very grounds takes the horror to a new level. Families were divided, sexes were split. Age was a principal criteria for selection; children under 14-16 and the elderly were sent to die. About 20% of people were chosen for labour and taken into the camp. Of approximately 1.1 million Jews deported to Auschwitz, about 200,000 were chosen and the remainder (about 900,000) were killed in the gas chambers. In total 1.3m people were sent to Auschwitz and 1.1m of them died there. These are sobering stats.
Inside, the compound is barren, sprawling and foreboding, with rows and rows of long narrow buildings. We go into a couple - one is the washroom where rows of concrete lavatories stretch. The stench and indignity is incomprehensible. Another building houses bunks; stark, cramped and uncomfortable, it's hard to imagine how anyone slept, being packed to the gunnels in these triple-high rickety bunks.Walking out, we are silent, still trying to comprehend the atrocities we've known about all our lives, and have been immersed in for the last few hours.
What human beings did to human beings here is unfathomable in every way. As we drive back to Krakow, the mood is sombre, our time spent here etched within us forever.
Back at the Andel's Hotel, it's time for dinner in the lovely dining room. The food is first-class and I organise a drink for everyone on Maher. It is welcome and helps to life the spirits after a day that cannot truly be explained, only experienced.
OBSERVATIONS OF THE DAY: Let's talk about roundabouts! They are everywhere in Poland, indeed in all the countries we've travelled through. There are small ones, large ones and huge ones - and always beautifully planted. Some are so big they have large trees, bushes and box hedging. They're like mini-gardens. Almost every intersection, city fringe or rural, and often in the cities themselves, is controlled by a roundabout. Sometimes our bus had a bit of trouble negotiating the circumferences of tighter, smaller roundabouts but, overall, traffic flowed easily, it felt very safe and I didn't witness any confusion by drivers. Bring on more roundabouts in NZ, I say!
Water is a necessity on hot days in Europe but sometimes it just doesn't cut it and a nice cold ice cold beer is a much better thirst-quencher. The local beers in this part of the world are light, tasty and definitely thirst quenching. I don't drink much beer at home but I enjoyed every sip on these hot days.
We walk sombrely through this square, sit on a seat, contemplate life here; but it's hard to envisage what it was really like.
For this, we need to go to Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory which is now a museum showcasing the difficulties of life in Krakow and the horrors that befell the citizens here. The Square was peaceful and empty, but the museum is very crowded.
It's an intriguing museum with narrow corridors which move you from room to room, from one vignette of life to the next. It's not easy to negotiate your way through the crowds, but each room is beautifully curated, capturing the difficult life and times of a city in the grip of a war and people for whom coping with hardship was a way of life. It's a very personal experience, and something of a history lesson; we come away with a real sense of life during the Nazi occupation, as well as Schindler and his List. So many enlightening bits of information, loads of haunting photos, slices of life ... we leave with more knowledge and empathy than we went in with. Must watch Schindler's List again.
From here we return to the Jewish quarter (not to be confused with the Ghetto) for lunch. There is no group lunch today, so we disperse in search of something tasty to eat. Elaine, Lynette and I find the "Hamsa Hummus & Happiness Israeli Restobar"; it looks and sounds just the ticket, so we take a seat in the shady courtyard. We order a metze plate to share and the obligatory beer. The bread is fresh and light and delicious. Yum.
It's time to head to Auschwitz. Shirley and Erice opt out but the rest of us board the bus that will take us to this place that we have known in our imagination for so many years. I've been to Dacau and Thereseinstadt (Terezin) in Czechia and, whilst "looking forward to it" isn't quite the right expression, I am eager for this visit.
Our excellent on site guide takes us to the iconic gates where those infamous words "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" arch over our heads like a ribbon of doom. It feels weird to be standing right here under this sign which today is framed by blue sky and leafy green trees. We seek shade beneath the trees, but I'm guessing they weren't flourishing here when horror was.
We enter the complex and are surprised by how orderly it all looks. Neat brick buildings in tree-lined streets, it was originally a Polish army barracks; it's not as austere or foreboding as I had imagined. Yes, there is plenty of barbed wire and an enclave of buildings that could obviously tell tales of horror, but the overall look of the place is benign. Nice, even. However, there is nothing nice about what happened here during the war years.
We go through Block 11, called "The Block of Death" by prisoners. Squalor, torture, terror and death happened right here for countless people. Outside, we see the "shooting wall".
Next door is Block 10 where women were the victims of evil sterilisation experiments conducted by Dr Carl Clauberg. We don't go inside this building but just seeing where these events took place was harrowing enough.
In Block 5 we see the belongings of those murdered - prosthetics, personal items, practical items and, most haunting of all, shoes and hair. Mountains of real hair that was removed and sold to German companies as raw material. Almost two tons of hair belonging to almost 40,000 people can be seen here at Auschwitz. Mountains of shoes that fit young and old, male and female; real shoes that belonged to real people who died right here. More than 100,000 pairs of shoes were gathered from the dead and just a fraction are on display here. Small kids' shoes stick out despite their size - no chance for the many pairs of tiny feet that wore them to grow old. Battered boots sit amongst heels that had no more outings. Shaving brushes used by old men who thought they'd carry on using them till they were truly old. Crutches used by people who thought that a buggered leg was as bad as life could get. It's utterly heart-wrenching, and a little intrusive, even voyeuristic.
We walk through Crematorium 1, sombre and respectful of those who died here when Zyklon B gas was introduced through holes in the roof. Many were killed during the experiments took place in 1941 to determine what the best chemical agent that would kill might be. This crematorium is in its original state, complete with furnaces - a combination of gas chamber and morgue, it operated as a death chamber before the main gas chambers in Birkenau were built.
From the main Auschwitz camp, we transfer the short distance by bus to Birkenau. We walk along the infamous railway line to the gate. It's surreal.
We know about the selection process, of arriving by train or wagon and being brutally shunted this way or that, to labour or death. But to hear about it within these very grounds takes the horror to a new level. Families were divided, sexes were split. Age was a principal criteria for selection; children under 14-16 and the elderly were sent to die. About 20% of people were chosen for labour and taken into the camp. Of approximately 1.1 million Jews deported to Auschwitz, about 200,000 were chosen and the remainder (about 900,000) were killed in the gas chambers. In total 1.3m people were sent to Auschwitz and 1.1m of them died there. These are sobering stats.
Inside, the compound is barren, sprawling and foreboding, with rows and rows of long narrow buildings. We go into a couple - one is the washroom where rows of concrete lavatories stretch. The stench and indignity is incomprehensible. Another building houses bunks; stark, cramped and uncomfortable, it's hard to imagine how anyone slept, being packed to the gunnels in these triple-high rickety bunks.Walking out, we are silent, still trying to comprehend the atrocities we've known about all our lives, and have been immersed in for the last few hours.
What human beings did to human beings here is unfathomable in every way. As we drive back to Krakow, the mood is sombre, our time spent here etched within us forever.
Back at the Andel's Hotel, it's time for dinner in the lovely dining room. The food is first-class and I organise a drink for everyone on Maher. It is welcome and helps to life the spirits after a day that cannot truly be explained, only experienced.
OBSERVATIONS OF THE DAY: Let's talk about roundabouts! They are everywhere in Poland, indeed in all the countries we've travelled through. There are small ones, large ones and huge ones - and always beautifully planted. Some are so big they have large trees, bushes and box hedging. They're like mini-gardens. Almost every intersection, city fringe or rural, and often in the cities themselves, is controlled by a roundabout. Sometimes our bus had a bit of trouble negotiating the circumferences of tighter, smaller roundabouts but, overall, traffic flowed easily, it felt very safe and I didn't witness any confusion by drivers. Bring on more roundabouts in NZ, I say!
Water is a necessity on hot days in Europe but sometimes it just doesn't cut it and a nice cold ice cold beer is a much better thirst-quencher. The local beers in this part of the world are light, tasty and definitely thirst quenching. I don't drink much beer at home but I enjoyed every sip on these hot days.
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