A day at Auschwitz and Birkenau

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I knew today's trip was going to be a very thought provoking one, but one I wanted to take. For so many years, I viewed the Holocaust as something very far in the past. It really wasn't real to me until I reread The Hiding Place. My parents introduced my brothers and me to that when we were fairly young, but it wasn't until recently that I truly got the time line. I was born just 20 years after the camps were liberated. Considering that I am a good 20 years older than so many of the summer help at work, it became real. I wanted to see and know more.

Today was cold, grey and rainy. At points, it just poured down rain. Luckily we only had rain; snow is forecast for Wednesday our guide informed us. I'm not going to go into a whole narrative of the tour. All told, the tour of both camps was about 4 hours. As I have read so many times on other travel bloggers' blogs, it is the size and scope of these places that is so overwhelming. Auschwitz I is big, but Birkenau is huge. So much of it has been bombed and destroyed, but chimneys rise from the fields in grim row after row after row. I will, of course, put up pictures, but I know they don't do this justice.

The ride back to Krakow was very quiet. I rested and just sat for a bit, then went out to hear the buglers that play at the church every hour. I can hear it from my guesthouse room, so wanted to catch it live. Stood there in the rain until I heard them, then went to a milk bar for dinner. Had a bigo of cabbage and kielbasa, a few pierogis and then the best borscht ever. It was one of the best soups I have ever had. Period. Will try to grab some more tomorrow. For now, I am just sitting here in the room listening to the rain and getting ready to head out tomorrow.

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Photos

Main Gate
Just as at Terezin, it was written that work frees you.

Guard Tower
The chimney from the crematorium is in the background.

Gas Chamber
Going into the gas chamber and crematorium at Auschwitz I.

One side of the camp
The row of old horse stables that became barracks just went on for such a distance

Inside a Barrack
The stone wall running down the center is connecting 2 fireplaces, but there was no fuel to burn most of the time.

Photo of the Squalor
The filth the people who lived here lived in was unimaginable.

Inside the Barracks
3 levels of bunks

More Chimneys
Rows and rows of more chimneys

Giving Some Scale
The main gate is just barely visible in the distance.

Bombed Gas Chamber
The Nazis bombed the gas chambers and crematoriums before they left. This is part of one.

The Undressing Area
This is from another gas chamber/crematorium. This is where the people would undress for the shower.

Comments

[anonymous]

thanks for the sobering pics Brendan.....i think the weather was a perfect backdrop for the day you had...can you imagine what winter days and nights must have been like there for the prisoners with little or no heat? It would be nice had the human race learned the lessons of the holocaust but genocides still take place today though not on this same scale. Mans inhumanity to man. SAD.

[Janie]

Sobering....
This is absolutely sobering.....Like you, I have heard and read and it doens't really hit home until you see it. It is amazing that stuff like this is still happening in this time and age. Absolutely amazing......

[Catherine]

Oxtail soup Instead
Because of my heritage, I also wanted to someday see the physical remains of the hell on earth construct devised to annihilate a race, a culture, a sect. I could not reconcile that this was possible growing up - wasn't mankind civil - forward thinking- only one would sacrifice for the many - how is it - that many could sacrafice for the many? Not possible I think. But, my traveling companion would have none of it. We stopped, at my request, at a small hotel restaurant in a town not far from Auschwitz. We had the most amazing oxtail soup - I never knew. No amount of negotiation would get me the recipe. But I remember it vividly as I remember the cold, rainy day that I was not to see the horrors of mankind. Sometimes you have to accept juxtaposition instead. That day - that amazing, over the top - best soup I ever had - let me know I had escaped reality. Soup is the best thing for the soul.