Poland
May 8, our group headed for Krakow, Poland. It was about a
four hour bus, and our first stop was the Wieliczka Salt Mine. You could tell
which statues, walls, and floors were salt by shining a light directly on it.
If it was translucent, it was salt. The salt mine was definitely not what I
expected. Inside they had a restaurant, a cinema, a chapel, and even little
gift shop centers. They recently added a laser light show, and it displayed the
how the workers moved the salt up the mines. We were not allowed to take
pictures inside the chapel, but they had a special shrine for Pope John Paul
the Second because he was an archbishop from Poland and became a pope.
The next day we toured the Wawel Castle in Krakow, the city
center and Schindler’s Factory. Inside the Wawel castle it showed armory that
was used and royal dressings, it is used today for state meetings. Inside Schindler’s
Factory it showed a list of the Holocaust survivors, pre-war signs with street
names, reconstruction of the basement where Jews were hidden, reconstruction of
a tram, reconstruction of an apartment in the Krakow ghetto, and the desk of
Oskar Schindler with a list of Jews saved by him. Schindler’s Factory was very
interesting, but only gave us a glimpse of what we were about to see the next
day.
On Sunday we took an hour bus ride to Auschwitz and Birkenau
concentration camps. The gloomy weather for the day fit the setting. This next
paragraph is going to be graphic. Our tour guide took us through the barracks
of the Jews. It was able to hold 400 but at least 1,000 was crammed in there.
Auschwitz was the largest Nazi German concentration camp and death camp.
Between the years 1940-1945, the Nazis deported at least 1.3 million people there.
Polish families living near Auschwitz were ordered to leave their homes so as
to accommodate to Nazi soldiers. There was many displays showing different
belongings of the Jews. One had 80,000 shoes, and that was only a fraction that
was saved. There also was a display of actual women’s hair that the Nazi’s
shaved. They would sell this and use it for carpets and stuffing for pillows
and mattresses. It was two tons worth of hair, and that took at least 40,000
women. That was probably one of the worst displays, seeing the actual hair and
processing what happened made me tear up.
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| Bifocals belonging to the prisoners taken by the Nazis |
There was a display that showed three
train tickets sold to Greek Jews who were being deported to Auschwitz. People
were pretty much buying their tickets to death. We were also able to see the
gas chambers and the process of how it happened. The guards would tell the
prisoners that it was time for inspection and they needed a shower. The Jews
would then undress and hang their clothes on a certain number. The guards told
them to memorize that number so they can pick up their clothes later, making
the Jews think that it was just a shower. 1,000 of them would all stand in the
gas chamber and then the chemicals would start. It took only 20 minutes, 20
minutes to kill 1,000 people.
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| The display showing the process of the gas chambers |
The corpses would then be cremated. Many prisoners
were transported to Birkenau, only 3 km away. In that camp there was 300
barracks, each holding 8,000 people. There were 5 different gas chambers there.
After the war the Nazis destroyed one of them to get rid of the evidence and
the Pols destroyed another. We saw a small train car that transported about 80
prisoners at one time. This train car had no windows, no toilets, no food or
water, and they traveled from 7-10 days. After prisoners reached Birkenau they
were told to get in one single file line. A physician would then pick and
choose if the prisoners would go to the left or to the right. The right side
was the strong prisoners who they thought could do hard labor, the left was the
weaker ones who were sent directly to the gas chambers. These gas chambers didn’t
look like showers inside, the guards didn’t try to fool them, and they knew
exactly where they were headed. A doctor would sit outside the door and observe
the gassing through a peep hole for twenty minutes. Our tour guide told us that
there was at least four different piles of corpses, because of where the small
airways on the ceiling where the chemicals were being poured were held. The weakest
were usually at the bottom, including children then women. And the strongest
were at the top, climbing their way up trying to get air. After 20 minutes,
another set of prisoners were ordered to burn the corpses. Because bones don’t
burn, they were destroyed by wooden hammers. These ashes and bones were then
thrown into ponds right by the chambers. The ponds were still there with water
and bones buried into the ground.
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| The car train that held 80 prisoners |
A memorial was built between two gas chambers. It had 23
slabs of concrete all saying the same thing in 23 different languages to
represent that many ethnicities that were sent to the camp. There was an English
one because of group of Jews from Great Britain was deported there. Although I
was present in the actual camp where terrible acts of humanity happened, it is
still hard to process how ruthless Nazis were. It was a very somber experience,
but one I will forever remember. We have gone through countless tours, churches,
and museums, but through this one, I have retained the most
information.
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| The memorial slab "For ever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, where the Nazis murdered about one and half million men, women, and children, and mainly Jews from various countries of Europe Auschwitz- Birkenau 1940-1945" |
