AlyssaBeck3

Auschwitz. Today was one of the hardest days of the trip. Coming into today, I had a feeling it was going to be a pretty tough day because this is the camp that I know the most about, but I was hoping that it would be touristy enough that it wouldn’t be too hard. I was wrong. Today started off early with a three hour bus ride to the camp where we watched The Pianist. It was a good movie. Even just pulling up to Auschwitz 1, I could tell that it was going to be a rough day. Auschwitz 1 has had many of the barracks turned into areas that show things found from the camp after its liberation and after the war. We had to wear headsets as we walked around in order to ... read more

Another travel day was experienced today. Four and a half hours on a bus went pretty well, minus getting car sick half way through (luckily we stopped for lunch and I got to be out of the bus for an hour). Arriving in Krakow, I can say that it is prettier than Warsaw but that doesn’t mean that it is all too pretty. We went exploring looking for food and I am pretty positive that the town was covered in straight ice. Settling for a café, I got cake and hung out with everyone while we figured out what to do that night. We came to the conclusion that we needed to cheer up and have some fun after three days of death camps so we got some drinks and played card games in one of ... read more

This morning we left for Lublin and I couldn’t have been more excited to leave Warsaw; it was a very ugly town. It was a fun three hour bus ride where we watched a movie on the history of Poland and then went straight to Majdanek. Majdanek was the first death camp that we have been to that still has a majority of the camp still intact. One of the most disturbing things to me was that the town is literally up next to the edge of the camp and that on the other side of the camp there is a large cemetery. To me, that is really disrespectful to the memory of the victims of the holocaust, and is just something that I cannot even imagine doing as a person who knows about everything that ... read more

We spent the day walking around the Old City, the Jewish Ghetto, and the Warsaw Ghetto Museum. We started the day off going around the outline of where the ghetto was; our first stop was in an old apartment complex that had part of the wall still running through the middle of it. Our group had divided ourselves onto each side of the wall with me and one other person in middle without realizing what we were doing. We each had our own reaction once our guide told us where we were standing. Standing as the wall created feelings that are hard to describe. It was weird to be the thing that divides people into two groups while representing so much. I represented hate, ignorance, unjustness, sadness, isolation, and all things associated with the holocaust. It ... read more

It was a rough day. Theresienstadt was our main visit of the day; it was a camp and ghetto. As we pulled up, all I could focus on were the graves outside of the small camp. Without knowing who the graves were for at first, I thought it was really disheartening to see a giant cross in the middle and the Star of David in the back. Learning that they were the graves of the people in the small camp, mostly political prisoners, it made more sense. Walking into the small camp I had an eerie feeling. It had a very abandoned feeling, kind of like an old western movie, and had a smell that I will never forget. It was horrific. I wonder if it smelt like back in the early 40’s. Walking around all ... read more