Krakow

I can’t believe this was only 70 years ago.  It shocks me to the core how much the world has moved on since Hitler tried to take it over with his own ideal breed of humans. 

To be honest I knew little if anything about Krakow, the Jewish Ghettos or Oscar Schindler.  I’d never watched the film Schindlers List and I’d never heard of Auschwitz. 

I’m not sure how to describe it, enjoyable is not the correct word to use, although it is a magnificent city with hidden gems and historic beauty, it also has its nasty secrets.

Leaving the airport on the train the place looked a bit shabby and I noticed a lot of graffiti; getting off in the centre it still felt rather derelict.   

We walked through a precession of what I’d call market arcades, predominantly food stalls lined with pastries and pizza slices. 

As we wandered we found what you would expect in any town, a square with what I assume was the town hall, a statue or two and a few shops, bars and cafes.

We discovered a little park of some sort with benches and my memory fails me but I will say a church and some other little quaint buildings where we sat and enjoyed our pastries.

It was a nice start to the trip.

We then managed to stumble on our hotel the Wyspianski.  For the money we paid I was made up with our room.  The trip had been arranged by our house mate who works at a travel company and we got an amazing deal and a wonderful bunch of people to boot.

The guide introduced himself and offered to go for a quick walk locally, we declined and decided to explore things ourselves at our leisure.   After a couple of beers we walked just a few minutes and found we were in another part of the city, the more upmarket slick end.  There were streets lined with fascinating cocktail bars, enticing restaurants and novelty type shops then we reached the main square Rynek Główny.  The place looked newly built, there was plenty of Alfresco dining and the main feature was a stunning architecture designed with arches called ‘the Cloth Hall’ and was home to many Polish stalls selling everything from scarves to tobacco pipes, an ideal place for gifts. 

Trust us to choose the most English looking ‘pub’ we could find.  My partner and I had one or two and then we left the lads to it.

Refreshed and excited for our first night of Polish allure we were served a three course meal at our hotel as part of the deal; I remember an absolutely delicious soup we were all very impressed with.  The main meal we all did a bit of a guess work, I would have said they were turkey steaks topped with cheese and covered in fried breadcrumbs.  The kind of oven food you can get from Tesco for about £2.00 served with chips and cabbage, it was pleasant enough.

After getting to know some of the others we headed back over to the square.  It looked even more spectacular in the evening, you could see into the restaurants and the Cloth Hall was lit up beautifully.  We sat outside then the lads led us to a Polish bar they had found earlier of which isn’t very helpful as I don’t recall the name, I do however recall the hospitality of the poles.  We made friends with a big Polish dude and this may not be appropriate to say but I find they have kind of a scary look about them, like they would have no problem in slitting your throat then sitting down to a hearty Polish stew and brew. 

After some free ‘cinnamon graham’ shots from the nice Polish man who refrained from harming us, we decided to leave the others and get off to bed, long day ahead.

The Jewish Ghetto / Schindler factory

  

Surprisingly the weather was warm, bright and sunny.  We all gathered together to meet the guide and set off towards the Jewish Ghetto.  After a short tram ride he showed us around the area with brief stops to explain some of the terror stories that occurred during World War II, although they weren’t stories.

Young and old families including children were forced from their homes. The Jewish were rounded up and kept in an area with a massive high wall where they could not get out.  The town was taken over by Germans and used as the government centre.   

There is still a small community here; we visited the markets and the High Synagogue.  The guide stopped us several times, he did a fantastic job explaining things and keeping us interested. 

Next up was Schindler’s factory.  After a long walk most of us crashed on the pavements whilst the guide did a pre talk.  At this point I wished I had worn comfier shoes.   

I’m sure you know the story here so I won’t waffle too much.  Oscar Schindler had gotten a group of Jews to work for him partly for cheap labour and partly to save their lives.  I watched the Steven Speilberg movie and was pretty moved by it.  Having been and having some and I say some because you can’t mentally take in what actually happened, understanding it was interesting to watch and Liam Neeson portrayed Oscar Schindler sensationally.        

One last stop before home. 

The Galicia Jewish Museum 

Everyone was struggling by now it had been a tiring day; it was a photographic museum so we were shown round by the museum which ran through a short description of sets of photos from throughout the War. 

We were then to meet one of the survivors.  He was a Polish gentlemen, perhaps in his 70s or 80s;  he had been a survivor of the Warsaw death camp.  He had an interpreter who relayed his story to us and allowed us to ask questions.

I don’t think I have ever been so moved by another human being before.  He looked like the sweetest old man.  He told of how he was captured as a young man and had lost his family in the camp.  He conveyed information of horrendous living conditions and how his weight plummeted to just bare bones.  The jobs he and his fellow campers were made to perform and the beatings that were regularly given by the Germans which often resulted in death.  You just could not imagine the horror that these people suffered and to meet an actual person in the flesh made it only too real. 

After listening to the guide all day tell us and show us it can never sink in to our brains as it is absolutely un-thought of and just incomprehensible to people of our time.  To see this man come and share his life with us, I can tell you there were not so many dry eyes.  He had some photos of his time there one of which was of a pile of human bodies mounded like rubbish bags outside a takeaway, discarded like garbage.  It was heart breaking I really wanted to hug this man.  He asked if we wanted to take pictures with him and some did and shook his hand but I felt like he was a show and I just felt a bit wrong. 

It was a physically and mentally tough day.

My partner and I ended the night in a wonderful restaurant close to our hotel with a typically Italian menu. 

Auschwitz

Another bright and warm day, after a short coach ride we arrived at Auschwitz 1. 

If you don’t know what this is as I didn’t, Auschwitz is a place 50km West of Krakow where the Germans transported the Jews and other undesirables to.  Auschwitz had their own guide who was a lovely Polish girl.  We were given transmitting headsets so when the guide spoke into the mic we could hear her regardless of all the other groups. 

It surprised me how new the buildings looked, there were many different blocks, it was a massive area. The guide explained that the Jews were kept here as prisoners. 

Jewish people of all ages and of all statures, Drs, Professors, Bankers were taken from their 

homes and transported to Auschwitz.  They were completely oblivious to what was happening and to the purpose of Auschwitz.  Some were put on trains with no clue what their fate would be.  There was little food or water if any at all on these trains.  Those that were sick or elderly often didn’t even make it to Auschwitz.   There were no facilities for using the bathroom so there was also a spread of disease amongst the tightly packed bodies that if they knew would have probably wished for their peril on that very train.            

The general feeling on the train was that they would be fed and watered when they arrived at their destination. 

The guide took us outside, the entrance way had a German sign that read Arbeit macht frei which ironically means ‘Work makes you free’.

The guide described what kind of people had been brought to Auschwitz and how they were given different uniforms to wear so they could be easily identified.  The German prisoners (criminals) were given uniforms with green triangles they were usually treated as ‘Capos’ which meant they were in charge of the other prisoners.  Jews were given a uniform with a yellow triangle over a red triangle signifying the Star of David and other nationalities a black star, homosexuals pink and political prisoners, red.

I cannot remember the exact order of the day which block we visited first so I will just recall the best I can. 

When people arrived in Auschwitz a selection took place; the SS guards made two simple queues, those who could work and those that couldn’t.   Small children and the elderly were separated from their families.  It was unknown to all of those people that this moment would probably be the last time they would see their loved ones. 

They were told to give up all of their belongings which the Germans cruelly ordered them to label so as to ‘get them back afterwards’.  They were tricked and lied to, led to believe they were simply being cleaned up, showered and they would at some point get their suitcases back. 

Entering one block the wall was lined with photographs of the prisoners.  They all bore the stripy prison uniforms except for their symbols.   The Germans had shaved the heads of all of the prisoners.  Most of them looked starved and in ill health. 

We saw the kind of living quarters these ‘prisoners’ were given and although it didn’t look great you cannot imagine how much worse it must have been, they had obviously had to clean the place and get rid of the smell.  I remember one part that was just soil and hay and obviously at the time would have been shared by many.  The guide told us this was often inches deep in rain water. 

One of the things that stuck with me was when we saw all of the belongings that had been taken.   There were thousands of suitcases, glasses, shoes, children’s things, piles and piles of it.  The Germans had no intention of giving their belongings back, they did it to keep order and to minimise panic.  They even took the gold out of their teeth and they sent the hair that had been cut back to Germany to be used to wove things.  It was a sad sight to see that these belongings were once an actual persons and a person who had no doubt suffered and died and this was all that was now left of them.

Birkenau

A short drive away was the second camp. 

Auschwitz 1 was where the prisoners worked and lived. Birkenau was where the train arrived where the selections took place and the gas chambers murdered millions of people.

As mentioned earlier the sleeping quarters were rife with disease.  There were no beds just concrete  blocks to sleep in bunker style, the bottom part was often wet which would cause violence between inmates for the security of higher ground; some of the Capo’s got their own rooms. 

I have a picture below of the toilet facilities.

As you can see this one part alone is enough of a hell in itself to the likes of us.  Having to share a hole with a room of strangers, a dirty disgusting hole that was unclean and smells and most people suffered horrendous bowel problems due to dysentery. 

Nothing was sacred it was every man for themselves; if you put something down it wouldn’t be there when you got back.  The clever inmates took all of their belongings with them wherever they went.  When washing they would hold things between their legs and struggle to wash.  The living conditions were so appalling that no one was equipped for the work, the temperature and the vile situations they were put in. Men were forced to carry out long hard days of labour for 14 hours a day in clogs or shoes that were the wrong size, they didn’t have warm clothes, soap, tissues, they had what they could steal and you can’t blame them.  Every ounce of humanity was taken from these people. 

The train track as you can see from the piccies is still intact.  At the end of the tracks were some chambers that had been knocked down when the Germans had realised we were coming.  There is now a small memorial site alongside these chambers with messages and people’s names.

The gas chamber itself, the one which was still standing brought an over whelming feeling.  You cannot imagine what had gone on in this very place, you stand breathing in the almighty cold air.  One thing I did feel in there was a massive temperature drop and if I were to believe in the supernatural you could have imagined the angry souls swimming around your head as you felt cold and pitiful. 

The weekend was one of my favourite breaks I cannot use the word enjoyable as it doesn’t feel right but to explore and learn all the things I did has truly imprinted on me and I hope for their sakes in a positive way. 

Our last night was spent with the group watching a band and drinking cocktails in the Lizard King.

It’s been over a year now since our visit and I still think about what an amazing trip we had and it’s led me to learn more about the war and all the people involved including the survivors.  I can recommend the book Five Chimneys by Olga Lengyel and I definitely recommend a visit to Krakow.