We visited the museum of Auschwitz today.
It's located in a town called Oswiecim; the name was changed by the Nazis when they decided to move in. A fact I didn't know, and it explained why the lady at the ticket counter huffed when we ordered bus tickets. We hopped aboard the minibus, along with a lot of other English speaking tourists, and I don't think anyone really knew what to expect.
On arriving to the actual site I was surprised to see that the town extended right up to, and around, the border of the camp. There was a childrens' play area in sight from the barbed wire. Life goes on.
We chose not to have a guided or audio tour, we wanted to see things at our own pace. Just stepping out onto the grounds was a strange experience. A coach load of tourists had just arrived and so a mass of people tried to fit through the doors leading outside. There seemed to be strange parallels between what was happening in front of us and what had happened all those years ago. Walking through the crowd, while I was wearing a lot of layers and a thick coat, I could still feel the cold and it just made me think of how absolutely terrifying it would have been to march into the camp wearing nothing but pajamas in the bitter cold.
Some of the blocks had been turned into mini exhibitions and we went into a few to see different aspects of both the camp and the war itself. The first block spoke of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". The exhibition outlined the progression of the initial plans to the creation of gas chambers and the expansion to create Auschwitz II at Birkenau, the death camp.
It was horrifying to read, especially as there were many bureaucratic records and reports of how many people had been killed, for what reason and with which method. There was list after list of names, some with crosses through, some with a giant tick next to each name. It all meant the same thing.
It all got too much for me when we went to the exhibition regarding what happened afterwards. There were rugs on display that had been made by the German officers, but after forensic analysis it showed they were made from female human hair. Yes, human hair. From the people they killed. The inhumanity and disconnect shown by the people who made these items overwhelmed me and I burst into tears there and then.
Following this we went round to a patch of land that had been used as an execution ground. When the Nazis realised that the war was lost they hastily took everything down to hide the evidence, but it was reconstructed by the museum. There were memorials donated from many countries in Europe placed round the area.
The final exhibit we saw showed us Block 11, the prison block. Political prisoners were sent, tried and often executed here. There were many dorms in the building that were labelled "habitable" in comparison with the cramped, dirty cells in the basement used as punishments. In stark contrast was the SS officer's study in the first room. It was a perfect office space, with a large table, comfortable chairs and a large window. It is really hard to fathom how the soldiers/officers felt when they were treating their fellow man with such disdain and cruelty.
Birkenau contains the majority of the gas chambers, it was purpose-built for execution. Auschwitz has the first gas chamber, which was also rebuilt by the museum to allow people to walk inside. Walking through all you see is grey concrete. Even so it was overwhelming, a room half the size of a tennis court was routinely filled with over 2000 people, locked and filled with gas.
Over the course of the war, across the two sites, over 1.1 million people were killed by the Nazis. This figure is just too large to comprehend, it wasn't until we saw the human stories that it felt real. Within one of the exhibitions was a room filled, virtually to the ceiling, with the shoes of those who died. All of a sudden that number was all too real. It was a powerful, beautiful representation of all those people. They had the most meagre possessions, and placed all together it was hard to pick out an individual from the whole, just as it was in the camps.
We've all learnt about the War in school, and even that young it was obvious that what had happened was atrocious; seeing it in the flesh changed everything I ever thought about the war. I honestly don't understand how any action we witnessed today was justifiable in the mind of a Nazi, and in the same way, why it took so long for the Allies to step in.
The second camp was not far from Auschwitz but we were both extremely emotionally drained by the sights and stories we'd read so we decided not to visit. Maybe if we were to stay in Krakow longer we'd be back to visit but we want to see the city we're staying in too.
It's located in a town called Oswiecim; the name was changed by the Nazis when they decided to move in. A fact I didn't know, and it explained why the lady at the ticket counter huffed when we ordered bus tickets. We hopped aboard the minibus, along with a lot of other English speaking tourists, and I don't think anyone really knew what to expect.
On arriving to the actual site I was surprised to see that the town extended right up to, and around, the border of the camp. There was a childrens' play area in sight from the barbed wire. Life goes on.
We chose not to have a guided or audio tour, we wanted to see things at our own pace. Just stepping out onto the grounds was a strange experience. A coach load of tourists had just arrived and so a mass of people tried to fit through the doors leading outside. There seemed to be strange parallels between what was happening in front of us and what had happened all those years ago. Walking through the crowd, while I was wearing a lot of layers and a thick coat, I could still feel the cold and it just made me think of how absolutely terrifying it would have been to march into the camp wearing nothing but pajamas in the bitter cold.
Some of the blocks had been turned into mini exhibitions and we went into a few to see different aspects of both the camp and the war itself. The first block spoke of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". The exhibition outlined the progression of the initial plans to the creation of gas chambers and the expansion to create Auschwitz II at Birkenau, the death camp.
It was horrifying to read, especially as there were many bureaucratic records and reports of how many people had been killed, for what reason and with which method. There was list after list of names, some with crosses through, some with a giant tick next to each name. It all meant the same thing.
It all got too much for me when we went to the exhibition regarding what happened afterwards. There were rugs on display that had been made by the German officers, but after forensic analysis it showed they were made from female human hair. Yes, human hair. From the people they killed. The inhumanity and disconnect shown by the people who made these items overwhelmed me and I burst into tears there and then.
Following this we went round to a patch of land that had been used as an execution ground. When the Nazis realised that the war was lost they hastily took everything down to hide the evidence, but it was reconstructed by the museum. There were memorials donated from many countries in Europe placed round the area.
The final exhibit we saw showed us Block 11, the prison block. Political prisoners were sent, tried and often executed here. There were many dorms in the building that were labelled "habitable" in comparison with the cramped, dirty cells in the basement used as punishments. In stark contrast was the SS officer's study in the first room. It was a perfect office space, with a large table, comfortable chairs and a large window. It is really hard to fathom how the soldiers/officers felt when they were treating their fellow man with such disdain and cruelty.
Birkenau contains the majority of the gas chambers, it was purpose-built for execution. Auschwitz has the first gas chamber, which was also rebuilt by the museum to allow people to walk inside. Walking through all you see is grey concrete. Even so it was overwhelming, a room half the size of a tennis court was routinely filled with over 2000 people, locked and filled with gas.
Over the course of the war, across the two sites, over 1.1 million people were killed by the Nazis. This figure is just too large to comprehend, it wasn't until we saw the human stories that it felt real. Within one of the exhibitions was a room filled, virtually to the ceiling, with the shoes of those who died. All of a sudden that number was all too real. It was a powerful, beautiful representation of all those people. They had the most meagre possessions, and placed all together it was hard to pick out an individual from the whole, just as it was in the camps.
We've all learnt about the War in school, and even that young it was obvious that what had happened was atrocious; seeing it in the flesh changed everything I ever thought about the war. I honestly don't understand how any action we witnessed today was justifiable in the mind of a Nazi, and in the same way, why it took so long for the Allies to step in.
The second camp was not far from Auschwitz but we were both extremely emotionally drained by the sights and stories we'd read so we decided not to visit. Maybe if we were to stay in Krakow longer we'd be back to visit but we want to see the city we're staying in too.
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