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| Journal - |
| March 20th, 2006 > Poland, a moving experience |
| Warszawa |
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| Uncanny how people leave a negative image of a place in your mind and it so often turns out to be a highlight. This was especially so for me in Warsaw. Both the guide books and countless people I have spoken to have few nice things to say about it, and I really can’t understand why. I got to know the place pretty well from very early in the morning, when my overnight train had arrived. The map in The Rough Guide I am sure refers to somewhere other than Warsaw. Thus I circled the city a couple of times before working out where I was. It doesn’t even include the railway station area, surely the one part of town most travellers need to know. I am convinced they make these maps after a staff office party, randomly throwing pins at a scrap of paper. They devote pages and pages to listing bars and restaurants (both of which change constantly and are always easy to find anyway) and pay scant attention to the things a traveller would love early morning or late night in a strange city - like somewhere to sleep. I won this Rough Guide to Europe book in a competition - from my experience using it, I’ll never buy one. |
| Stare Miasto - Old Town. A bit of a misnomer really, for the old town is actually quite new. The entire area was flattened during the WWII. The pictures defy belief: there was barely one single building left standing. But soon after liberation the hardy Poles set about re-building their town. They did this based on traditional design and even built with much of the original materials. Ironically, some were also built with materials the Nazi’s had earmarked for their own projects! Today it is a relaxed and friendly place. It remained dry, bright and very cold - perfect weather for exploring it’s cobbled streets. By Plac Zamkowy (castle square) is the former Royal castle, once the home of the Royal family and seat of Parliament, but now a museum. This houses all the original furnishings and a collection of cityscapes by Bernardo Bellotto, which were used extensively by the architects when rebuilding the city, such was their detail. |
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| At right, above, in the background are the Gothic spires of Mariacki Church. Legend has it that during one of the Tatar raids, a guard watching from the tower saw the invaders approaching and took up his trumpet to raise the alarm; his warning was cut short by an arrow through the throat. Today, every hour on the hour a trumpeter plays the hijnal, halting abruptly at the point the watchman was supposed to have been hit. Rather than a traditional sort of war cry, the sombre melody would incline me to fall asleep rather than take up arms. |
| Auschwitz |
| I can find no words to describe how it feels to walk in the death camps of Auschwitz I & Auschwitz II Birkenau. Even on the seventy kilometre journey from Krakow I begin to feel hollow. The countryside looks bleak. Where some workers have disturbed the snow to dig, the soil is grey and tired. Passing through rural villages I wander who lived in them during those horrific times. I look at the railway tracks and contemplate what sad cargo may have passed along them sixty years before. But through the window, people just get on with their lives. This is their home and what is in the past bears little consequence. For the first time visitor to the area, what happened here is hard to comprehend.
There are two main area’s to the camp. Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II Birkenhau, the latter 3km away. Both sites are open to the public at no charge, but guided tours in various languages are recommended. Typically the tour lasts for three hours over the two sites, leaving plenty of time to go back over things and contemplate at your own pace. The knowledgeable guides can help you understand fully what happened here. Auschwitz I was the original concentration camp. It stands today largely as it was found. The red-brick barracks were originally part of a Polish Army base. Incidentally, the town that actually surrounds the site is called Oswiecim in Polish, Auschwitz is purely a German name. You won’t find a bus anywhere in Krakow going to Auschwitz. The local people were simply driven away from here when the Nazis moved in, the buildings used by the camp guards. The things we’ve all seen on TV or in books are there in full; entire rooms full of human hair (used for making a type of cloth); more large rooms filled with suitcases, shoes, hair brushes; a tangled pile of thousands of spectacle frames. These were all separated from their owners during “processing” upon their arrival. |
| The famous words above the entrance “ARBE T MACHT FREI” mean “Work Brings Freedom”. In fact, though a lie, meant to deceive new arrivals, they actually would be quite true. Few people who walked through those gate’s ever left, those that were not murdered within hours of their arrival were worked to death. The conditions in which they were kept, their very miserable existence could not be called “life” in any way, and thus death was a form of freedom. This is how you finally became free at Auschwitz.
Two of the most sinister barracks stand together in one far corner of the camp. In the alley formed between them, a shooting range where at least twenty thousand people were shot against the wall. Nobody really knows how many, but some people suggest the figure is actually much higher. To the left, the block in which Professor Dr. Carl Clauberg and others conducted his sick experiments on numerous women and children. To the right, the various cells and torture chambers where prisoners could be further reduced and killed. I didn’t know that torture had gone on here on such a massive scale. Those that had done something wrong, steal a mouthful of bread or an extra item of clothing to keep warm, if they were lucky were shot against the wall. Otherwise, they might have been put into the “dark cell” for up to one month. Alternatively, four people would be crammed into the “standing cell”. Entered from ground level through an iron door the size of a small fireplace, this cell in total darkness was so small the four people could only stand. They were left to die of hunger and exhaustion, sometimes taking up to two weeks. |
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| Of everything that happened here, I find the torture especially hard to comprehend. If the Nazi’s final solution simply involved killing as many as possible, why go to such great lengths to torture them in such a horrible way. What could have caused them to actually believe their actions were right in any way?
Where Auschwitz I was adapted for use, and the killing was very much in the experimental stage; Birkenhau II was however a purpose built extermination camp. At 2km square it is of staggering scale. This site has also been largely left in it’s original state, though most of the barracks were removed by Russians and Polish during the lean post war years. In their place, eerie lines of brick chimneys that formed part of the wood burner in each barrack. Incidentally, these were of little use, as fuel was rarely supplied. |
| The gas chambers were the final result of lengthy experiments in mass killing. Their efficiency is startling. The four chambers and crematoriums of Birkenau were blown up by the Nazi’s as they fled the advancing Russian army. Today, the ruins remain as they were found. One of the smaller chambers is still intact at Auschwitz I. It consists of an underground chamber, perhaps just six metres by twenty. Six hundred were crammed in here at a time, under the impression they were to shower and disinfect before settling into their new homes. In the newer chambers, the illusion was completed with fake shower heads along the walls. As the last few were squeezed into the doorway, panic would often break out, dogs and sticks were used to beat them in. |
| Doors sealed, two or three canisters of Cyclone B were dropped through the roof, and in twenty minutes the Nazi’s work was complete. Of course they would not be involved with the job of clearing bodies, for this they used prisoners to dispose of their own people. A doorway leads from the gas chamber directly into the crematorium, maintained today as found. A small trolley on tracks was used to feed bodies into the two furnaces, once any gold teeth had been removed. The room is dark and reeks of evil. Every surface is blackened with soot from the furnace’s. One cannot begin to imagine what it was like to work in here. |
| It’s difficult to explain why I or anyone would want to visit. It is not about tourism in the conventional sense, like visiting Niagara Falls or such like. Its about understanding something which happened so recently, that has ongoing effects even to this day; something that even helped shape the world we all live in now. Racism, intolerance, hatred, call it what you will, all play a part. In various forms it is still prevalent throughout the world today, though it may not be so obvious. The lesson we should have learned from the Holocaust must never be allowed to fade. People should visit Auschwitz, future generations should me made to understand what can happen when intolerance is allowed to prevail. Kids who think they have it hard because they don’t have the latest sneakers, may be able to appreciate they already have the most valuable thing in the world; their freedom. |
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| There are plenty of other buildings worth investigating in the old town. Surrounding the large cobbled main square are beautifully restored three storey merchants house’s, recreated in the old Baroque style of the originals. The Barbakan and St John’s Cathedral are worth a look, as are the numerous cosy restaurants and cafés. Outside the town walls, the new town is in fact quite old itself. There is plenty to keep the nosy traveller interested on a walkabout; from numerous war memorials and museums to the Parliament buildings. The largest outdoor market in Europe can be found over the River Wista, sadly I didn’t make it. Apparently, its worth a visit there. I am told, get there early and watch your pockets. It’s a great place to buy a Kalashnikov, apparently; I thought about upgrading the umbrella.
I met up with Moritz and his partner Alina, along with Krzysztof and Zosia with their ten month old boy Stanislaw. Taking me out into the forest for the afternoon, it was so nice for me to leave the concrete behind. We hired ski’s and set about making ourselves look stupid with (mostly my) poor abilities. We ate grilled sausage and I drank hot (that’s hot, not warm) beer. It was a real treat to be out doing a normal thing on a Sunday afternoon, just like lots of locals enjoying the sunshine and the outdoors. Thank you guys - it was a pleasure to meet you! Another night train and a three hour trip south to Krakow - this time arriving late evening. Thankfully those at the Rough Guides office party had seen fit to include the station on this map, thus I found somewhere to stay relatively easily; walking the streets in the dark with a pack on is never fun (I‘m lost, foreign, rich - mug me please)! Many people had insisted this city was the jewel in the crown of Poland, so I was looking forward to having a look around. But my main motive for diverting my route here was to visit Auschwitz - a 70km trip from Krakow. |
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| The barrack design was borrowed from the German military horse stables, which would house fifty two horses. However, more than six hundred prisoners were crammed into these; giving an average of six people to one bed. Conditions were horrific; hot in summer, freezing during winter. They worked 12 to 16 hours a day with little food or clothing, and had to live in these conditions. Many thousands simply died due to this. Scrawled on the wooden beams in various barracks, messages such as “keep clean avoid disease”. The irony in this is that the prisoners had no such opportunity to keep clean. In women’s camp A, an estimated twenty thousand people were housed. They had one water tap between them. |
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| Time to leave Poland... |
| Krakow was a nice enough city. But, as expectations were high, I came away largely disappointed. But honestly, it deserves more time than I gave it. However, I found the people, especially at the awesome Daisy Chain [insert link] hostel to be perfectly friendly. My Russian visa starts any day now, whether I am there or not - so after a few days down here I turn north again. A late night stopover in Warsaw is followed by a ten hour endurance test aboard a train headed for Lithuania.
Or is it? With me in charge - nothing is ever quite that simple. What do you think to changing the name of this site? www.theblunderyears.pom Stay tuned…. More soon |
| I've tried not to go on about Auschitz too much in this journal; but for those interested there are links at left and much on the net if you do a search. Don't forget, these camps were only two of many across occupied Europe. You can view the rest of my images on a special page by clicking here. |
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