Auschwitz

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We had a busy day today which was troubling and thought provoking to say the least.

The day started with breakfast in a paper bag from a corner shop....pain au cabbage. That's not the Polish name but it describes it well. A kind of croissant with cabbage goo in the middle. Not for everyone and not something that I'll rush to taste again. Still, when in Rome and all that....

The shop was in the Jewish ghetto of Kraków. An area of 320 buildings that housed 20,000 Jews from 1941 to 1943, when the ghetto was "liquidated". Most people were killed there on the spot while others were sent to Auschwitz and other camps. There isn't honestly much to see in the ghetto but it was eery to imagine life there. This is the location of Schindler's factory of Schindler's List fame.

From there we took the tram back to the hotel to take a taxi for the one hour drive to Auschwitz. I'm not sure what to say about that place except that it was deeply troubling. The kids were engaged and brave but some of the pictures and exhibits were really grim. The mountains of human hair, shoes, suitcases etc gave a sense of the magnitude of the crimes that happened here. But stepping into the gas chambers where thousands and thousands of innocent people were murdered was truly awful. How on earth could this stuff happen?

We spent a few hours at Auschwitz then took the 3km ride to Birkenau where the scale of things was staggering. It is far more run down than Auschwitz but far bigger too. The gas chambers and crematoriums were partly destroyed by the fleeing nazis trying to erase evidence, but the Gates of Hell where the trainloads of people arrived were intact. As a parent it's really troubling to stand on the spot where so many families were torn apart forever as the trains rolled in. Women and children in one line (and many went directly to the gas chambers), while men who look capable of working went in another line. Grim.

Some photos may give a sense of how things look at these camps.

We have tomorrow morning in Kraków then we are heading to Budapest in Hungary. The rest of our trip should be less harrowing but I'm really glad we came here to witness one of the most miserable places in human history.

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