Kraków is a really lovely city, especially in the summer, and it is easy to get caught up in the happy buzz of the place. While you are there it is difficult to remember and comprehend that just 70 Km away still stands a gruesome reminder of the cruelty of the human race. A short bus ride took us to the Oświęcim train station, where hundreds of thousands of prisoners of the Nazi regime disembarked from their train to go on to almost certain death at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration/death camp.
It's not a pleasant tourist attraction, but I think it's an important part of history to preserve as a constant reminder of what evil can exist in the world and to guard against it. Walking through the gates marked "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work will make you free) is bone-chilling in its cold-faced lie.
The most stomach-churning sights were the crematoriums, torture chambers and the piles of confiscated shoes. I walked around Birkenau in the summer heat and thought about the prisoners who were working there non-stop practically without food or water until they dropped dead from exhaustion, starvation, or illness. If they even made it to Birkenau of course, since most prisoners were sent directly to the crematoriums at Auschwitz. I had been to Dachau a few years ago when I visited Munich, so I was prepared for what was ahead, but it can't but depress you and make you gloomy. Still, I feel like something important is learned from these visits, and so I try to find my own way to make sense of them.
The bus driver on the way back was clearly running late, because he drove in such a kamikaze fashion that one of the passengers was forced to ask him to slow down. Back at the hostel, I went up to the room to take a nanna nap, but found a lovely English girl who said she was off to meet a friend who was going to show her the Kraków sights and would I like to come along. How could I refuse? He showed us the medieval chains for attaching sinners to the church walls, inviting public scorn and shame:
the old and great Collegium Maius complete with singing clock:
the fire-breathing dragon (sans fire in this pic):
the Copernicus:
the Wisła, the old Jewish ghetto (these are a piece of the ghetto walls, which still stand:
and Schindler's factory (in the process of being turned into a museum), among other things. It was an amazing afternoon. We bought him a couple of rounds of beer as a thankyou, and then headed off to a jazz bar where the English lass was meeting some other friends from the hostel. I was talking with a French guy and English girl, but then the band played "Ob La Di Ob La Da" and I started to pay more attention to the music! My ears have a special radar for Beatles songs, even if they are barely audible my brain somehow filters that particular sonic information and sets the "Good Music" alerts off in my brain.
I got chatting to the barman who had spent some time in Argentina and was eager to practise his Spanish, and then later when the band finished up I had a couple of rounds of drinks with them too. All in all a top day, I met a load of cool people, learnt lots and had an amazing time!
It's not a pleasant tourist attraction, but I think it's an important part of history to preserve as a constant reminder of what evil can exist in the world and to guard against it. Walking through the gates marked "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work will make you free) is bone-chilling in its cold-faced lie.
The most stomach-churning sights were the crematoriums, torture chambers and the piles of confiscated shoes. I walked around Birkenau in the summer heat and thought about the prisoners who were working there non-stop practically without food or water until they dropped dead from exhaustion, starvation, or illness. If they even made it to Birkenau of course, since most prisoners were sent directly to the crematoriums at Auschwitz. I had been to Dachau a few years ago when I visited Munich, so I was prepared for what was ahead, but it can't but depress you and make you gloomy. Still, I feel like something important is learned from these visits, and so I try to find my own way to make sense of them.
The bus driver on the way back was clearly running late, because he drove in such a kamikaze fashion that one of the passengers was forced to ask him to slow down. Back at the hostel, I went up to the room to take a nanna nap, but found a lovely English girl who said she was off to meet a friend who was going to show her the Kraków sights and would I like to come along. How could I refuse? He showed us the medieval chains for attaching sinners to the church walls, inviting public scorn and shame:
the old and great Collegium Maius complete with singing clock:
the fire-breathing dragon (sans fire in this pic):
the Copernicus:
the Wisła, the old Jewish ghetto (these are a piece of the ghetto walls, which still stand:
and Schindler's factory (in the process of being turned into a museum), among other things. It was an amazing afternoon. We bought him a couple of rounds of beer as a thankyou, and then headed off to a jazz bar where the English lass was meeting some other friends from the hostel. I was talking with a French guy and English girl, but then the band played "Ob La Di Ob La Da" and I started to pay more attention to the music! My ears have a special radar for Beatles songs, even if they are barely audible my brain somehow filters that particular sonic information and sets the "Good Music" alerts off in my brain.
I got chatting to the barman who had spent some time in Argentina and was eager to practise his Spanish, and then later when the band finished up I had a couple of rounds of drinks with them too. All in all a top day, I met a load of cool people, learnt lots and had an amazing time!
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