Aushwitz and Birkenau

Even though I was still feeling the effects of my head cold, we decided to spend our last day in Krakow visiting the memorial at Aushwitz. Instead of purchasing a tour from one of the many vendors in Krakow, we decided to go by ourselves on the bus.

We found the bus station behind the train station and bought tickets (about $3 each way). The bus we got on was a "minibus" and the seats were really small. Fortunately we found a space behind the driver's seat where I could actually fit with my knees.

The trip took about an hour and a quarter. If we had gotten on the regular bus, it would have taken a half-hour longer, because it would stop more often. When we got to Aushwitz we had planned to use our guidebook to tour. However, there are so many people there that the only way they can avert overcrowding is to require individuals to join a tour (at least between 10 AM and 3 PM).

The tour turned out to be a good idea because it was the only way to get everyone through in a timely manner. All of the participants wear headsets, and the tour guide has a little lapel mike, so you only hear the narration from your guide.

All of the tours start in the smaller camp, Aushwitz I, which was established in the early 1940s for housing mostly political prisoners. This is the part of the camp that has the famous front gate "Work Sets You Free". These prisoner's barracks and administration buildings were not destroyed in 1945 when Aushwitz was abandoned, so they house most of the museum exhibits.

It is truly sobering; you almost go into a kind of numb shock seeing just a portion of the spectacles, hair, luggage and shoes left behind by the victims. Each of the blocks now houses a particular exhibit. Block 10 was where medical experiments were done by the SS, but no one was allowed inside.

The sixteen or so prisoner's barracks were all surrounded by double walls of barbed wire and guard towers. Just outside of the barbed wire were the officer's housing, where the administrators of the camp lived with their families (including their children).

The first, very rudimentary gas chamber was constructed in Aushwitz I. The more efficient, assembly-line gas chambers that we're all familiar with were constructed in Aushwitz II/Birkenau and were destroyed by the Nazi's when they left. The original gas chamber-crematorium has been restored in Auchwitz I.

It's a strange and solemn experience to walk through it; nobody says a word.

After about two hours, the first part of the tour was finished, and everyone got on buses to go to Aushwitz II/Birkenau. This was the much larger camp that was built in 1942-43 for the extermination of the Jews. Over one and one-half million people went through Birkenau in a little over a year; over 90% of them were Jews.

You really can't understand what a big operation this was until you walk through it. This rail car was left at the point along the rail line where the selections were made. We stood at the point where the photograph at the top of this blog entry was taken. The camp stretched as far as we could see in every direction.

Walking from the main entrance (which was used in Spielberg's Shindler's List) across to the memorial was about a kilometer.  By the memorial are the remains of the five gas-chambers and crematoria that were destroyed.

All-in-all, it was a moving experience. Both of us are glad we didn't miss it. Because we were on an English-speaking tour, the participants had a lot of questions. Most of them were about why someone didn't stop this. I've always wondered what could make an entire civilized country believe the (to me) completely ludicrous racial theories that underlay the Third Reich. How could supposedly rational people turn their attention from the war effort to murdering the helpless civilians in their midst?