Krakow
Trip Start
Aug 06, 2007
1
26
47
Trip End
Nov 22, 2007
Krakow,
Poland
Friday, September 7, 2007
I'll start by saying that this could be a long blog so be prepared.
On Wed 5th sep we arrived in Krakow after a long 7 hour train ride from Prague. The scenery was not very interesting but i don't really mind sitting in the train so it was fine watching a country go by. We arrived at about 9pm and it was pouring rain, actually it rained all the way from Prague, The Hostel we are staying in is right across the road from the station, so luckily we didn't have to walk in the rain for to long. This Hostel has got 1st place fo far. Our room is a very big room with a huge king bed and comfy fluffy doonah, its more like a hotel room just without your own bathroom, the bathroom is cthe leanest i have ever seen and the whole place is very modern. top marks for the people who run this place plus its very cheap aswell. Krakow is a lovely old city and is not wuite as touristy as Prague which makes it a nicer city in my opinion. The only thing is that it hasn't stopped raining since we got here 2 days ago and i mean its pouring constantly. Its makes it really hard to walk around the city and enjoy it. Part of yesterday we spend walking around the big shopping centre across the road. Last night we went to this funny little traditional restaurant and Vic ate White Borsch soup and i ate Beetroot soup with dumplings, the soup part was not nice. For main we both had what i would describe as big raviloi things filled with dim sim filling, well thats what they tasted like, they were sooooo rich though. we also had ice cream at this ice cream place that had a million different flavours. not very polish but we liked it.
ok now we come to today (fri 6th sep). We took a 1.5 hour bus out to Auschwitz, its the largest of the Naxi Concentration camps. To be honest i dont know how much i should write here because i don't want to upset anyone, its a depressing place. Basically there were 2 camps (actually 3 but mainly 2 were used and are still there) The first one was origaanlly a Polish Prison used for political Prisoners but when the Nazi's occupied poland during WW2 they thought it would be a good place to send all Jews. Auschwitz 1 was the smaller of the 2 camps and was used for administration plus at capacity it held up to 20,000 prisoners. It was also here that the Nazi's or the SS as they were known experimented with the Poison that they used in the Gas chambers. Block 11 was the worst of all, this is where prisoners went to be punished if they broke the rules, for instance had gone to the toilet out of hours or weren't working hard enough. very few prosoners actually survived these punishments. they were awful. Human experiments where also performed, they were basically treated like lab mice. Many of the other blocks in Auschwitz 1 have been turned into museums, the exhibits that i felt the most were thousands of pairs of shoes of victims in a massive big pile including babies booties, hundreds of suitcases mostly owed by Jews, and the worst, masses of Human hair that the Nazi's kept from the victims which were to be used in Fabric and other materials, they didn't waiste anything. We actually did a guided tour which started with a 15 minute documentary that was filmed when the Camps were liberated, the scenes in this film were horrific and i won't go into detail. 7000 prisoners were freed. However when the Nazi's got wind of the imminent attack by the soviets they sent many of the prosoners who were still alive off to other camps in what was known as the Death March. I will now talk about Auschwitz 2, this is where most of the victims perished, they estimate a total of around 1.5 million with the large majority being European Jews and also Gypsies, Disabled and other. This camp is enourmous, to big to describe in words, some of the barracks still remain and a couple have been maintained inside so you can see what the living standards were like for the prisoners, now i need to mention that when i use the word prisoner i don't mean criminal, they were just referred to as prisoners but they were as you know innoccent men, woman and children. Auschwitz 2 was built when they relaised that the 1st camp was not big enough for what they had planned which was the complete extermination of the Jewish population in Europe. in the early years of the camp the prisoners where taken there by train, they would be sitting like cattle in these trains and sometimes for days depending on where they came from. Some didn't even survive the train journey. They were all led to believe that they were going to a better life and basically packed their lives into a 25kg case. When they arrived at the camp, the Nazi's would select who they thought was fit enough to work and who wasn't. ie woman and children, these people where send straight to the Gas chambers and Crematorium without being registered or anything, no way to identify them. As i type this i feel really upset again. Its horrible to imagine. The prisoners who where chosen to stay in the camps lived like animals, Each building would house around 400 people who slept on hard concrete floors with straw and about 8 people on each bed. The clothes they wore would not be changed for months, they slept and workedd in the same clothes every day and many died from Disease due to such poor conditions. They were given very basic rations everyday and would have to work for many hours, many died from exaustion and starvation. This act apon humankind was so extreme and it was very hard to walk through these camps however it was an experience that i will never forget and it also puts things into persective. We are very lucky to have the lives that we live. I am sorry if i have upset anyone writing about this stuff but it is part of my travel experience and something i wanted to share. actually there is alot more i could say but i think its best to leave it at that. The holocaust was horrific and i am very happy to be an Australian.
This is going to sound very trivial but i am a little sick as i have a cold and a very sore throat so i am going to go to bed now and think happy thoughts about where we are headed next, tomorrow night we are taking an overnight train to Budapest, i will tell you all about it in the next blog.
me
xx
PS. i am sorry about my grammar and spelling, i do a quick proof read but might not catch everything
