While in Krakow, I had the opportunity to visit Auschwitz. Everyone knows about this place, but you don’t realise the scale until you get there. I visited it on the eve, of sorts, of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the camp.
I travelled there in a minibus from the main Krakow bus station, it was pretty cheap from what I can remember.
The scenery on the journey to there was nice, kind of highlighted how much progress Poland has made as a country, what with how modern places looked compared to lesser well off places.
Getting back to the Auschwitz visit, what a lot of people don’t realise, is that Auschwitz is a German name, the local town, Oswiecim is the correct name, the town was only known as Auschwitz when the Nazis occupied it. The camp is basically referred to as Auschwitz Birkenau.
When I got to the entrance, everyone went through security, then the tour started. The tour I went on covered two of the 3 camps. The first part covered what had been a Polish military base, (the buildings are different to the other camps as they had been built by the Polish prior to the Nazi invasion).
This camp (Auschwitz 1) has the infamous “Arbeit macht frei – work sets you free” sign, and we went on a tour, and seen many exhibits (suitcases, shoes, various belongings, pictures of some of the people brought in).
The general feeling I got of the place was an eerieness, we seen the yard where they executed people, and the gallows.
We were then taken to Auschwitz 2 i.e Birkenau – we never got to see the 3rd camp, and we seen inside some of the “living quarters”, if you could call them that, looked really grim, especially when you consider that there would’ve been no sanitation or anything like that.
We then seen the rail line into the place, and then we seen the gas chambers, or what was left of them – it almost seemed like a production line of death, just so hard to fathom. People brought in, some people seemed fit enough were selected to work, and basically worked to death, so many just went straight to the gas chambers.
I was glad I went to the camp, just to say that I’ve been there, but it was so hard to take in, kind of hard to fathom, so surreal, so many people wiped off the face of the earth – R.I.P everyone who died during this time.
I would definitely recommend a visit to here just for the scale of it, and to pay respect.
celtic traveller blog 