Trigger warnings: Jewish Holocaust, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, death and murder
Saturday morning came quickly. We were up at 7 in an *attempt* to catch our bus to Oświęcim (Auschwitz in German) for our 10:30 Auschwitz II-Birkenau Memorial and Museum visit. We missed the bus because I wasn’t sure what the bus looked like. We had no problem getting to the bus station and finding the right level but I had never taken a Discover Cracow bus before, so I wasn’t sure what to look for. Oh well, $75 later, we were in an Uber headed to Auschwitz II-Birkenau. The Uber arrived earlier than our bus would have, so we got a hot drink and tried to wake up.
Our guided tour started promptly at 10:30 with about 20 other English speakers. We started outside the camp and our guide gave us an overview of our morning. She made a point for us to understand that Auschwitz II was a concentration camp and Birkenau was a death camp. We entered Auschwitz II by walking under the Arbeit Macht Frei sign. This is the only part of Auschwitz I took a photo of. You are allowed to take photos in all but two spots but, personally, it felt weird to take photos in such a horrible place. We were able to walk through many of the barracks, also called blocks. We saw maps with signs of where Auschwitz prisoners came from and photos of those living in the Jewish ghettos lining up to get deported to different concentration camps. We saw photos of life inside the camp that were taken in secret by the Sonderkommand. We saw a model of the Birkenau crematorium. I saw the same model at the Holocaust Memorial and Museum in D.C., but it felt different to see the model in the place where it happened. We saw a few rooms that were filled with people’s belongings like luggage with names and addresses on them, shoes of adults and children, eye glasses, Jewish prayer shawls, prosthetics, and crutches. One of the rooms contained victims’ hair, actual hair. It was horrible to see and made me feel nauseous.
In another block was scenes of how the prisoners lived. We saw the beds they slept in and bathrooms they used. You could barely call what they slept in a bed and where they washed their hands a bathroom. The inside walls of this block were lined with photographs of prisoners with their name, tattooed number, home city, birth date, and death date. We saw the clothes they wore: the single pair of thin material they had to wear every single day regardless of weather and dirt. On the way to block 11, the Death Block, we saw the Death Wall, which had flowers at the bottom as memorials of those who were killed there. Block 11 was where prisoners had trials and were tortured. We walked past the Starvation Cell, Dark Cell, and Standing Cells. Remember St. Maksymilian Kolbe? He took the place of a prisoner in one of the torture cells in block 11 and that is where he died. This part of the tour was especially nauseating.
We ended the Auschwitz II part of the tour by walking through the only still standing crematorium. It was really difficult to walk through.
After, we had a break to reflect while we waited for the bus to take us to Birkenau.
The bus dropped us off right at the train tracks leading into Birkenau and ending at the dividing platform. We walked to the dividing platform and saw the train car that prisoners spent many day crammed in and standing up on without food or water and little light. We saw where a Nazi doctor would the decide the fate of all the prisoners who entered. A secretly taken photograph caught the moment a doctor decided whether a man, who just arrived, would go right or left. The doctor’s hand is in the middle about to determine the man’s fate in the photo.
Next, we walked the path of the prisoners that got sent to the right, to the crematorium. Unlike Auschwitz II, all of the Birkenau crematoria were destroyed by the Nazis in order to destroy evidence before the Soviets arrived to liberate the camps, so we viewed the ruins of crematorium 2. Nearby, is a monument created in memorial of all the victims. There were 20+ plaques to represent all of the languages spoken by the victims. Then, we were able to walk through a barrack that housed the prisoners sent to the left at the dividing platform. We saw where they slept and used the restroom and tried to stay warm in the winter. It was difficult to imagine so many people crammed into a small space. Similar to the crematoria, many of the barracks were in ruins, only the chimneys still standing. This was the last part of our tour. We were told how the Nazis started the Death Marches in order to send as many prisoners away before the Soviets arrived. We heard about how the Soviets liberated the camp and what happened to those victims when they were liberated. Then our tour was over.
I think the most difficult part of the tour was walking from the dividing platform to the crematorium. Even though I was wearing comfortable and well-fitting clothes and shoes, the uneven road hurt my feet. I couldn’t begin to picture being told you’re going to start a new life and ending at Birkenau hungry, thirsty, exhausted, in uncomfortable and ill-fitting clothes and shoes, and marching to your own death. It was hard to think that I was walking on the same path that 1.1 million people walked and took their last steps on.
It was an incredibly hard visit. Many times I felt sick to my stomach. It was a very solemn experience. As sickening as it was to visit, I am glad we did. I felt that it was important to visit to see what the millions of Auschwitz II-Birkenau and Holocaust victims suffered at the hands of the Nazis and to remember and honor them. It was so different being able to be and see where the horrific events took place compared to learning about them in class. I would recommend that anyone who is able to visit the site with a guide to see for themselves what happened under Nazi regime.
We spent the bus ride home reflecting. And yes, we caught the right bus back to Krakow. We took a nap at the Airbnb and headed back to the Main Square since we had tickets to visit the Rynek Underground Museum. I had visited this museum during one of my classes, but Nick was interested so I wanted him to see why Krakow’s first floors are actually underground. The short answer is that the city is now 7 km more above sea level because of travel and construction throughout the 19th and 20th century.
After a long and emotional day and 25k steps later, we headed back to the Airbnb to get some sleep before our overnight bus to Gdansk.
Helene's Poland Adventure 