Europe 2019 - Day 27 (Part 3)

2 June 2019, Sunday 

Then to Birkenau by a short bus ride. Birkenau was a concentration and extermination  camp with gas chambers and crematoriums. It was built by the prisoners of Auschwitz from materials of destroyed Polish houses. Birkenau is sometimes also known as Auschwitz II. There was also an Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp created to staff the IG Farbenindustrie, a synthetic-rubber factory; and dozens of other sub-camps including Oskar Schindler’s factory. Auschwitz II–Birkenau went on to become a major site of the Nazis' ideology to rid the world of all Jews. 

Here we saw commemoration plaques in various languages (mostly European languages). The first sentence was a harrowing message to the world:

“For ever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity...”

We went to one of the barracks which from December 1943 onwards, housed several dozen Polish children and their mothers as prisoners. They were deported to the camp in connection with the forced resettlement of Poles, and after the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. There is only 1 entrance to the barrack. The beds are divided into 3 layers one on top of the other, and in each level 4-5 children sleep together. There is only 1 small chimney per barrack so it was never warm enough during winter. And these were children. Heart wrenching.

Our guide informed us that some Polish children were considered to have superior genes - those with blond hair and blue eyes - so they were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to German families in Germany. Many of these children grew up never knowing their own parents or their motherland. They probably believed they were Germans.

By end 1944, more and more camps were liberated by Soviet troops. So Birkenau had to be evacuated - the prisoners were sent to Germany on foot, to other camps. They had to march in the snow, in the dead of winter. This last march came to be known as the ‘Death March’. The installations in the camp were then dismantled, the crematoriums and about 30 barracks with clothes, shoes and documents were destroyed by dynamite by the SS because they tried to remove evidence of the atrocities committed here.

However, we could still see remnants of some of the original barracks as well as remnants of the original gas chambers and crematoriums - the steps leading into the gas chamber, the walls, and roof, now fallen on the floor. It’s really harrowing and sad.

Not all the prisoners went on the Death March. The remaining prisoners were liberated on 27 January 1945, a day commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.  In the following decades, some of the survivors wrote memoirs of their experiences in Auschwitz, and the camp became a dominant symbol of the Holocaust. 

I don’t think I’ll ever visit another concentration / extermination camp again. It’s just too depressing. I can’t help but wonder, if I lived in 1939-1945, and captured by the SS (I would’ve been considered to be of inferior genes since I’m not blond hair blue eyed - roll eyes), during the selection process - would I have been sent to the camp to work, or sent to the gas chamber? If to the camp, how long would I have survived in those sickening conditions? And if I did survive it all, would I have become bitter and angry, or would I have lost my mind, or would I be the same person who entered the camp or a different person altogether? A better or worse person?

On that dark note, the weather today is really hot, reaching almost 30 degrees  Celsius! So tomorrow I can finally wear my 3/4 pants for a change! When we arrived back in Krakow we first went to the tourist information centre to obtain information about our trip tomorrow. That done, we stopped for lunch cum dinner. Today I had chicken and potatoes, and beer of course - another Polish brand called Okocim. This was quite nice. 

Then since it was still reasonably early, we decided to walk around another part of Krakow known as the Jewish Old Town, which apparently has been unchanged since the 1940s. As we were walking towards the area, we came across 3 churches, the Church of St Michael the Archangel and St Stanislaus Bishop and Martyr and Pauline Fathers Monastery which was originally built around the 13th century, the Roman Catholic Church of St Catherine of Alexandria, one of the biggest Gothic churches here in Krakow, and the Corpus Christi Basilica (Bazylika Bożego Ciała in Polish), yet another a Gothic church founded by King Casimir III the Great in 1335. 

Then to the Tempel Synagogue, the Jewish cemetery, the Stara Orthodox Synagogue, a part of the town that was the location for the movie Schindler’s List, a building that was once a house of Torah study by a group (founded in 1810) who conducted Talmud lessons for the adult members of the Jewish community, and many more buildings of beautiful architecture.

I forgot that a hot day actually makes you feel more tired than a cold day so we went back to our hostel pretty early (8.30 p.m.). I tried yet another brand of Polish beer called (Sachsenschlosser - I hope it was Polish!) and then called it a night. Today we walked a total of 14+ km.