Through history and landing in Warsaw

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Breakfast at 6.30, on the road by 7.30 as we had to be at Oswiecim by 8.30. You may not recognise that place as that is the Polish name, most of the world would know it by it's German name - Auschwitz.
It was a sombre, moving experience that we will never forget. We were actually quite late arriving as there were road works and we had a take a large detour. The bridge that Topdeck usually go over was under repair and could only take traffic weighing up to 8 tons... our bus was 18 tons (without luggage and people!)



We arrived at 9.30 which meant we had 1 less hour which wasn’t a problem because Auschwitz and it's neighbour Birkenau were emotionally draining and I know I couldn't have taken another hour.
We started at Auschwitz where we saw the places the prisoners slept, how initially the bedding was made from hessian sacks on the floor, but things improved slightly to bunk beds as supplies arrived, only to deteriorate as the camp became so crowded that conditions became worse than ever. We saw 1950kgs of human hair, 40,000 shoes and numerous artifacts from the prisoners. Heard how 60,000 prisoners arrived after completing the 'death walk', how 75,000 had died on the walk and at least 1.5 million were executed in the gas chambers.

It wasn't only Jews, although they made up the majority of the prisoners that were killed. After being lied to and told that a better life awaited them (hence many prisoners arrived with suitcases containing the things they felt they would need in this new, exciting place), they were herded off the train and immediately separated into men and women, young and old. In many instances, the women and the elderly never made it to the dorms, but were immediately taken to the gas chambers. It was only the strong prisoners that were kept and put to work... and then only until their strength ran out.
We saw some of the ways prisoners were punished: the suffocation room - 20 people crowded into 1 small room with no fresh air - it would take days for them to die slowly; the starvation room - self explanatory really; the standing room - 4 people in a space about 1m square, no place to sit down, no place to stretch, very little air, food or water, eventually they died of pure exhaustion.

Katie suggested for us to do some ‘reality stones’ whilst there. We were to carry a stone with us through our experiences at the camps and keep it with us through our journeys in life. So that when we think that we are having a tough time, to take a look at the stone and be able to put into perspective our troubles compared to those suffered by people in the concentration camps.

So mentally exhausted after this experience we all practically passed out on the bus. So many of us were unable to have conversations, we just needed to be alone with our thoughts for a while.







We arrived in Warsaw that night.

The campsite was next door to a bowling alley and a lot of felt we had to do something with some kind of normalcy to overcome what we had seen and heard about this morning. So about 12 of us went bowling - We hired the lane for 1 hour and we could play as many games as we wanted in that time. It was great fun and just what we needed
In the morning we had 1 1/2 hour driving tour of Warsaw. We saw Lazienski Park (with the Chopin Monument), Palace of Culture and Design, Pawiak Prison (museum now but was a place where prisoners where held before being taken to a concentration camp), Heroes of the Ghetto monument and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Everyone else was dropped off, but we decided that we needed a rest day. So we went with the bus back to camp, did some washing, found the nearby shopping centre and caught up on some postcards and R&R.

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