September 28, 2015

 

 

 

Sunshine!!

 

It’s an early wakeup for us this morning.  We’re leaving tonight so we have to be packed and checked out early.  We’re meeting for breakfast at 8:00 and will be picked up for a bus tour to Auschwitz and Birkenau at 9:00.  Richard and Roz are on the same tour.  They will be staying one more day and then they take a night train to Budapest.

Our driver (Isabella) shows up a few minutes before nine.  She is driving a 15 passenger Mercedes and by the time we are finished with pick-ups there will be about 12 total riders.  It is an hour drive to Auschwitz through the Polish countryside.  Isabella stops to give us a little overview of the day and then puts on a movie describing life in the camps that lasts until we arrive

What can you say about these places?  Interesting?  Morbid?  Brutal?  Emotional?  Informative?  All yes.  Fun? No!  Over a million people were tortured and killed in these two camps.  The Nazis made a decision early on that their goal of extermination of the ‘unworthies’ of the world needed to be streamlined for maximum efficiency and these camps were the result.  Auschwitz was the primary worker camp where those deemed unacceptable to the Nazi ideal were brought to be incarcerated, used, abused and eventually murdered.  Birkenau, about 3 kilometers from Auschwitz, was the ultimate killing machine with gas chambers, crematoriums and mass graves.  At one point there were 90,000 human beings housed in Birkenau awaiting death.

You can find lots of sources to read about these camps and we don’t need to reinvent the history.  Here is a little about the logistics of our day.  When we arrived at Auschwitz we were paired with other groups so that we totaled about 30 in all.  We were given headsets and a receiver to follow along with the commentary of our leader (Joanna????)  The tour of Auschwitz took about 2-1/2 hours through the living facilities, experimental medical areas, torture, hanging and firing squad areas and furnaces.  None of which was a pretty sight.  Our leader was a perfect narrator conveying a sense of despair and hopelessness throughout the tour.

We met again at the van and went to Birkenau for a tour lasting a little over an hour.  Where Auschwitz was mostly preserved, Birkenau was mostly destroyed.  Only the chimneys of many of the barracks and debris from the gas chambers and crematoriums remain.  A couple exceptions are, what were originally stables for army cavalry (52 horses each), now had become housing for hundreds of inmates.

A little before 3:00 we met again at the van for the ride back to Krakow.  It was very quiet, everyone lost in their own thoughts about our day.  We were dropped off at the square and bid farewell to our new friends Richard and Roz.  This is our day (sunny all day by-the-way) for a dinner from the BIG MEAT vendors in the square.  John gets the sauerkraut stew and vegetables, Pat gets the pig knuckle and vegetables and Mary goes only-protein with a kielbasa.  We have been soaking in the aromas of smoked meat ever since we arrived and this was worth it.

We find the last bit of sunshine at a square-side table for a beer and people watching.  Sun makes a world of difference with attitudes and everyone is friendly and ready for fun.  It is a Monday evening and the square is filling once again like the weekend.  We were supposed to contact Jeff and Jacque for one more wine before we left but our phone is deader than a doornail after a day of pictures.  We’ll have to make plans for Napa or Minneapolis.

While there is still a bit of light we make a practice walk (without luggage) to the train depot to make sure we know what will happen later when it’s dark and we’re overloaded.  There is of course a learning curve involved and we feel smart that we made the effort.

We have about an hour to kill so it is one more walk down Florianska street and then on to the Bulldog bar for a last pivo.  We’re spent and ready to move along. A little before 9:00 we return to the hotel for our luggage, a quick email to Jeff apologizing for our disappearance today, and hug for Natalia who compliments us on being good guests.  Thank you very much.

With our new-found knowledge we move directly to the right train platform and grab a seat.  We have reserved a compartment for three on the train and we’ll see how that goes.  There will be a review of all that tomorrow and it may not be pretty.  Another big (sunny) day, our last in Poland.  At least for a while.

What did we learn today? “Time has no power to erase these memories.” A quote from the Russian army photographer who was one of the first to arrive in Auschwitz.