http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Europe , Poland , Lesser Poland , Auschwitz en-us Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:44:23 BST Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:44:23 BST Disclaimer In order to avoid upset or inspire anger I would like to point out my sincere sympathy and respect for those who died at Auschwitz as well as the families of those killed there and my views in no way seek to appease or dismiss the terrible events that took place there.We set aside Thurs morning to visit Auschwitz. We originally intended to take the tour but on discovering the package http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-298749.html First things first. We decided to stay at this hostel another night instead of taking a night train to Prague. It just rocks too much and we will leave for Prague Czech Republic in the morning. Now onto more serious less logistical writing.Today we visited Auschwitz concentration camp. It's Kate here by the way Ian will post too. We both want to type our own experiences because something lik http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-297094.html The last day of our trip through Poland we stopped in the town of Oscwiecim which in German is Auschwitz. It is of course home to the famous Nazi concentration camps. It is not always clear from the information seen in a TV documentary or read in a book but there are actually three Auschwitz camps close to one another. The main camp has been preserved and turned into the Auschwitz museum. I http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-293198.html 61408 AuschwitzIt was hard to imagine that I was at the actual Auschwitz. You hear all these stories about how horrid a place it was and about the lives lost and the short supply of survivors and to actually be there is an out of body experience. First I want to start with the facts of Auschwitz. It was started as a camp for Polish political prisoners. It was made by the prisoners themselve http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-287617.html I awoke this morning to what must have been the most brilliant day of the year if not the decade. The sun shone bright it was warm and breezy and floral perfume floated in the air. What a great day the kind of day you remember come winter. However with train ticket in hand for O347wi281cim is there ever a fine day to go to Auschwitz Do you roll out of bed look outside and say ldq http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-278087.html Today was the day to visit Auschwitz one of those days that are not enjoyable but essential to do when travelling when we come into contact with the physical reality of an historical event we can get a glimpse of the human reality and come out the end of it different people. We have learned about the holocaust at school through films and movies but it was always a bit theoretical over http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-275693.html 122881228820170228252282321322260852104020102AuschwitzBirkenau385982001329151652923549823526354416529238663257882486327794263772481920687333242437528872652922006335377ldquoSchindlerrsquos Listrdquo20358244712635624505242131229012288122882017026089251713828331383 http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-263284.html So this entry is pretty depressingjust wanted to give a quick warning. You'll understand if you keep reading...I went to Auschwitz this weekend in Krakow Poland. I am going to discuss a lot of what I saw most of which is extremely disturbing. A lot of people ask me why I would do such a depressing thing. When I sit and think about why I went I tend to ask back to the person How could pass http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-247288.html Our travels have taken us as far East in Europe as we will go to Krakow Poland and the site of the largest death camp built by the Nazi's. Our words can in no way describe this place where an estimated 2.25 million people were murdered so we will not even try. With all the suffering pain and torture inflicted here it is the most sadistic place a person can imagine. Suffice it to say that th http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-238153.html December 18Note Please use your judgment when sharing this blog with children.I was up early on Tuesday morning for a quick breakfast and a search for a bus. I decided that it would be easier to ask at Tourist Information than search by myself. They turned out to be very helpful and I caught the very next bus which took us right to the Visitor's Center at Auschwitz I. After the two hour bus r http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-229352.html We woke up early again today to finish the other half of our concentration camp tour. Yesterday I learned a lot from our tour. Seeing with my own eyes the buildings and places where many people died just touched me greatly. Today had an even greater impact on me because the camp we visited today was where most of the people were executed itrsquos actually known as the extermination camp. In http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-228402.html We woke up this morning at around 645 ate breakfast and left the house by 730 a.m. We drove for almost two and half hours to a town called Oswiecim. This town is a very popular place for tourists because it is home to the concentration camps. The camp that we visited today is called Auschwitz I. The reason why itrsquos called Auschwitz I is because therersquos another camp called Auschwit http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-228401.html After Jasna Gora we arrived at BIRKENAU Auschwitz 2 and only had 20 minutes to walk around. A watch tower and the railroad tracks that the prisoners arrived on were the first things that came into sight. Upon entering barbed wire fences separated the area in 2 sections and were on either side of the tracks. The prisoner's barracks were to the right of the tracks. Signs tell the history and ex http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-226187.html It's been almost two years since I wrote my last really depressing blog which at that time was on the Cambodian genocide. Over the weekend I visited Auschwitz just near Krakow in Poland. Words really can't do justice to the concentration camps or to what happened there. Consequently I'm going to keep this brief and just put down a few of my own thoughts that I had while I was there censor http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-217679.html We left Krakow for a day trip to Auschwitz to take in all the history. It was cold again and some light snow had fallen the night before. I figured that this would add to the intensity of what we were about to see when we arrived in Auschwitz. I guess it would somehow make the place more real to me knowing that the people who were held there and died there had to deal with conditions like these http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-216955.html Unlike most of our previous tourist attractions you don't go to Auschwitz Concentration Camp to be entertained. You go to try and understand the enormity of what happened to so many political prisoners mostly Jewish held in concentration camps in Germany and Poland.I still don't understand how people could be part of this kind of industrialscale murder but it's not just numbers to me any mor http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-215891.html Last Monday morning I went to Auschwitz. The program had arranged for an Englishspeaking guide to lead our tour. Driving up to Auschwitz was not exactly what I had expected. Thinking back on what I was expecting is kind of embarrassingly nave. I guess I thought I would see a bunch of crematorium smoke stacks and beyond that I just picturedhelliphell. Auschwitz is actually one of three concentr http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-215355.html November 2004The pictures do the talking on this blog. http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-214998.html I really don't think there's much to say about it....I can't even explain...I may be able to later when it hits me that I went there and saw 2000 tons of human hair just sitting in a room...and luggage and shoes....40000 pairs of shoes all of victims. yea. I'm attaching a few pix. though. I also tried absinthe. OWWWWWW. I couldn't even do one full SHOT. I took one gulp and YOWZA My head hurts. http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-212105.html spent this past weekend in freezing touristic Krakow. it is a beautiful city with many old buildings but its just foreigners central with only about 20 actually being poles living there. it was good as it was the first time we heard english in a month and we could actually talk to people other than ourselves but im glad im living in a remote village as it really is experiencing living in http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-211500.html Work shall set you free. Which I suppose is the slogan of Hitler's Final Solution as it was also marked on the gate at Dachau see Four Super Boys. In trying to write this blog once again I am at a loss of words. Dachau hit pretty hard standing in the open courtyard where hundreds of thousands of prisoners lived the end of their days watching a documentary and seeing rooms with piles http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-210587.html we arrived in the afternoon at the German Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz II. It was an experience like nothing else to see the gas chambers and crematoriums first hand. The thought that over 1.5 million people were murdered here 90 being Jews was unimaginable its like half the population of Greater Vancouver just gone.Basically I took lots of pictures of what I saw and so they sort of tel http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-210578.html . http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-210158.html Poland is such a huge country compared to the rest of Eastern Europe. We did not really want to visit Warsaw but had to stop there for a night after a 8 hour night bus from Lithuania. It was not bad I expected a huge dodgy concrete city with only old people and a sign saying everybody else has gone to London please switch the light off when you leave....... but I was pleasantly surprised. We had http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-210127.html Breakfast today was a quicker affair as today we were heading to Oswiecim and Birkenau more commonly known as Auschwitz.We got to the ticket office and before I could say where we wanted to go a bored looking sales girl informed me about the buses to Auschwitz. We caught a minibus for 28pln return for both of us. 5 approx the journey took just over the hour.Once at the museum centre we each b http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-203469.html After working out how to leave Zagan and managing it successfully with a picturesque train ride across the beautiful lush green Polish countryside we arrived in lovely Krakow where we have stayed for the last few nights. It has been quite a full few days and a confronting chaser to our intense experience at Zagan. Initially we had not planned to visit Auschwitz because we didnrsquot reall http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-200465.html Oswiecim and Brzezinka are the Polish names of the villages. When the Germans took over in WWII they told the locals to evacuate and from then on the villages became more famously know by their German names AuschwitzBirkenau. Site of the ghastliest of crimes about 1500000 people no one knows the exact number were mudered here. It is imposible to describe what it's like to visit this place. http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-197377.html We left Krakow early Sunday morning to drive through rural countryside on our way to Osciecim also known as Auschwitz. The countryside is rolling hills very light soil color with strip farms of different crops usually owned by different family members. Adam our host coordinator shared a lot of Polish culture history and way of life on the morning drive to help us understand better.We had http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-197201.html While being in Poland we were told by others we ran into throughout our trip that we should go to Auschwitz because it does something to you that pictures and hearsay just cannot do. The best way to describe the visit is powerful. Auschwitz was the largest concentration camp during from 19401945. It housed at any given time 90000 inmatesrsquo 90 of which were Jewish. What makes the statist http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-177931.html No amount of words can express the feeling at auschwitz the shear scale of the horror that happened there is incomprehensible. Although you see and know what went on there when you walk around it is impossible to relate these facts to reality. I was in two minds as to whether i wanted to go to auschwitz but in the end im glad i did because yesterday when i left auschwitz i think i was differen http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Poland/Lesser-Poland/Auschwitz/blog-175476.html