Concentration Camps

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My feet hurt. It was a long, long day. We were up before 5:30am and we got into our new hotel room in Krakow at 7:05pm tonight. We were supposed to have a formalish dinner with the group here in the hotel – salad, pumpkin soup, duck confit and xander fish (whatever that is) but we just couldn’t do another 2-hour dinner. We told our tour guide we were going to McDs and left. It’s 8pm and we have ate (Burger King in the mall across from our hotel), we have our aching shoes and socks off, and we will probably both be asleep within an hour. I do know one thing… we hit over 10,000 steps today! A teeny old lady and old man in the seat in front of us on the bus today were wearing Fitbits. We hit 10,000 steps at some point while walking through Auschwitz Concentration Camp…. AND we walked another camp – a Birkenau Death Camp – after that tour! No sitting. No stopping. My poor feet.



To backtrack some… we started the day with a drive to see the famous Black Madonna painting. It was Sunday and the church was packed – people everywhere. It was like being in the Vatican again. They all kneel when they pray. It was interesting. Some good stuff there. Some odd stuff there. Our guide today was a priest. His name was Simon. He was hilarious. He kept saying “Simon says…” and he cracked a lot of jokes. He made me think of my Simon at home and how wonderful it will be to get kisses from him later this week!! YAY!! ? Anyway, the history of the Black Madonna is incredibly interesting and I understand why the people pilgrimage to it however it is sooooo packed with people it is almost useless to go here.



Next stop – Auschwitz Concentration Camp. It was the largest concentration camp ever and it was the site of the original gas chamber. The general in charge here was doing such a good job of killing people that Hitler ordered many more to be shipped here via cattle cars on the railway. Our Auschwitz tour guide was excellent and she was clear to us on many occasions that the SS and the Nazis were monsters. Period. What happened at Auschwitz and all the other concentration camps should not be forgotten by anyone because the minute we forget, history will repeat itself… maybe next time Christians or all Catholics or all “X” religion, race, origin, etc… This is NOT okay. We are ALL humans. It is hard to even imagine what happened to these little kids, men, and women even though I was standing beside the electrical fences and seeing the hooks they were hung on and walking in the extermination chambers… it was unbelievable. I will post pictures and tell the stories that way. There is too much to say but I will show some of it to you. I apologize for the gruesomeness now however, this is not something we as humans should forget happened.



Next stop - 5 minutes down the train tracks to Berkinau Death Camp. This camp was built just a few minutes away from Auschwitz on the rail station. The trains would pull-up and the Jewish people would be placed basically in giant holding rooms until they could be sent to the gas chambers. If you were here, you were sentenced to death even though you did not know it. They could “exterminate” about 4,700 Jewish people a day but the Jews were arriving in larger numbers than that so this is why Berkineau Death Camp was built. It held over 90,000 Jewish people at one time. They were treated worse than we treat chickens. I took a couple of pictures from this terrible place and will tell more stories through pictures. It was Hitler’s goal to exterminate all 11 million Jews in Europe. He successfully killed 6 million Jews. They dug their own graves, plundered the bodies of the dead, dug ditches to bury their fellow Jews, etc…



We left the camps and as we drove to Krakow this evening several people on the bus told their family stories. The little old lady in front of me told of her cousin who died at the age of 91 years old last year. She was the only member of her immediate family to survive Auschwitz. She was “sterilized” by the SS. Sterilizing was something discussed a lot today. Basically, one of the doctors at Auschwitz was given free rein to experiment on sterilization techniques of women so they could get rid of all Jewish and anyone who did not have blue eyes and blonde hair. This lady’s cousin never married, lived a good life after the war, and always seemed like she was happy. She came to the U.S.A. shortly after the war ended and the camps were dismantled. She did not like to talk about her time in Auschwitz.



Our friends from New York all had mothers or fathers in concentration camps. Sarah’s father was in Auschwitz but he would never talk about it. Arry and his wife stated their mothers had been in concentration camps. This was a very personal experience for several people today. I cannot imagine walking along the camp and knowing your mother was in camp 16 or 17 or etc… Eh.



I will try to tell the stories of the camps quickly with some pictures. Tomorrow we will have a much more uplifting day in Krakow!

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Photos

Highways in Poland
..have these big dividers so you can't see cars on side roads. Kinda odd?

Faith
Priest Simon told us about this - it is rosary beads a prisoner of a concentration camp made from bread. It is stored in a special case near the Black Madonna. Even in the worst conditions, people still kept their faith.

Entrance to Auschwitz
"Arbeit Macht Frei" which means "Work will set you free" which was a slap in the face to already hard working prisoners. They were worked to the death, literally

Auschwitz - Rows and Rows of prisoners
These were the former barracks turned into concentration camp. The prisoners actually helped build more barracks and more rooms for more prisoners.

The train tracks ran right into Auschwitz
Preplanned by the Nazis.

Picture of arrival day
Healthy men age 13 to 30 were separated from older men, sickly, disabled, children, and mothers, women

Plundering
Each person to be "exterminated' usually had no idea. They were told to bring their tools, their most prized possessions, but only a very little could they carry. Prisoners were told to undress and lay their valuables in one room and remember their hook number so as soon as they took a shower, they would return to their hook for their clothes. They were stripped of everything - entire families - babies and children to old men and women - all naked - and put in a room that (eventually) looked like a shower... and then they were all gassed to death. The bodies were then plundered - other prisoners were assigned the terrible duties of pulling any gold from their mouths, shaving all of the hair from the women, and checking all of their parts - including intimate parts - for valuables. The SS got very rich off the valuables the Jews were carrying. They sold the tools, the hair, the valuables. The prisoners in charge of the plundering of bodies were kept in 3rd floor attics away from other prisoners so the word about what was happening did not spread. The idea was to keep all prisoners calm and full of hope until they too died.

An entire room of shoes
Enough shoes were found for 40,000 people

Auschwitz gas chamber
They would pack 2,000 naked people in here at a time- men, women, children - to gas them all to death.

Auschwitz - gas chamber
The gas was dropped in from the ceiling holes

Welcome to Birkenau Death Camp
The cattle cars of Jews arrived nonstop on the train tracks into the camp.

Comments

[Kari]

Tears
Thanks for posting Ida. I am in tears reading this. The horror was real and beyond comprehension. It is great that you were able to travel with such an amazing group and to hear their family stories of survival.

[Mallory]

Wow.
This must have been such a difficult part of your journey. I am in shock as I read. As many times as I have heard these stories or watched films that address these horrible events, it always feels shocking and new. As if we have to bury it after we hear it each and every time in order to function. Maybe this is why it is so important to hear the stories, so you can't bury it so deeply that you forget. Thank you for sharing and reminding me.

[Paula]

Sad history
That is very sad. What a privilege to see those sites. Btw today 16th is Maggie's 1st Birthday. AND Wednesday they are inducing Chelsea. Baby soon

[Stacy]

I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU PASSED UP THAT YUMMY DINNER! And then I read on... not sure I would ever be able to handle going here.. let alone twice like Kamie. 6 million people. It's just so hard to fathom. The gas chamber pics are eerie. I wonder about the supernatural here. Have you ever seen The Boy in the Striped Pajamas?

[Eeda and Jahn]

Everything is haunted
They told many stories of haunts. Also, the olde town buildings in Estonia are very haunted!! Lots of interesting stories from them.