A sad day in Auschwitz

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I've always wanted to visit Auschwitz, the biggest concentration camp in Europe, and that's actually what lead me to visit Krakow.

One morning in Romania I was sitting at a bus station and started talking with a Chinese girl who was heading to Budapest and then to Krakow and planning to visit Auschwitz and she said she had purchased her ticket and everything. I didn't know I needed an advanced ticket so I was glad I met her. Once I got to my destination I looked online and tickets for the next couple of weeks were sold out but glad to have found tickets for the dates I was planning to be there.

Auschwitz can only be visited with a guided tour and you can either go on your own by bus and go on one of the tours they provide (in 7 different languages) for about $12 or you can get a tour from an agency a day before from the main town for about €25 with transportation included. Once I got there I noticed a huge line for the information and I think you can actually get a ticket on the day but have to wait a long time and pray for a place in a tour in a language you understand so I think it might be better to book in advance.

Taking the bus there was very easy from the main station. The buses go every 15 mins or so and costs 24zloty roundtrip if you a roundtrip ticket from the driver. I saw a couple who got on the bus with me on the way back and the driver (same one i bought my roundtrip from) charged them each 20zloty, unsure if that's the real price for one way or they got ripped off.

I arrived in Auschwitz an hour before my tour started so it was perfect time to read all the boards outside sharing a little bit about auschwitz, and the life of the prisoners.

At 1pm my tour started with the first stop being the "Arbeit Macht Frei" banner at the entrance of the camp. That famous German phrase means "Work sets you free" which is very ironic and not at all true!

One of the first things that our Polish guide told us was about the concentration camps being German camps in Poland, and not "Polish concentration camps" as many people sometimes called them. He went on to explain that Poland was chosen by the Germans as a strategic location due to their central position in Europe but that all the people working in the camps where German, it wasn't something the Polish did.

(Oh! I put filters in all the pictures to match my feelings about the whole experience and to show the darkness of such place. Ironically by the time I left there were black clouds and rain!)

Lamp post with the number of the block

We then entered the first room where the guide talked about the deportation process, how many villages around Poland were emptied by the nazis and forced to go into camps.

The hardest part for me to hear was the selection process where kids and old adults were sent directly into the gas chamber to die. At times I stopped listening to the guide and fantasized in my mind how people could have helped, how if I was a guard I would probably tried to do something but in reality there was not much other people could do for them. It is so sad to know that if you helped those in need you and your family could also be killed but at the same time I can't help but wonder about the guilt of those good people that wished they could have helped but decided not to in order to protect themselves and their families. But... do you blame them? I don't know!

What people looked like going to the camps

The tour started in AUSCHWITZ I which was huge but then the guide showed us the map of the camp I compared to II and it was at least 40 times bigger and 1,000 times worst! In there people were mostly going directly to their death!

Here is a picture of how a room would look like. People would go in and get undressed because they were going to "take a shower", the room was spacious and had higher ceilings than downstairs in order to avoid anybody getting suspicious of what would happen next and prevent any kind of concerns from the prisoners. After getting undressed people were moved downstairs into the gas chamber which had low ceilings in order to have less room for air and to kill them faster, the room was smaller and people were being crammed in there and pushed in order to close the door. Listening to the stories was painful and I couldn't help but picture the stories in my head and it was just awful, such a heart breaking past, so much pain between the walls we walking through!

The worst part of all is that the Germans denied that any of that happened but then thousands of the cans of poison used to kill the people were found.

Cans of poison!

The most painful part was seeing the belongings left behind by those who were at the camp, I think it makes it even more real, it gives you a true visual and a piece of those people's lives.

Suitcases

More than 80 thousands shoes, many without a matching pair, were found.

Piles and piles of shoes!

All kinds of brushes

The worst room for me was the one with hair! Yes, hair! They found more than 2 tons of human hair than were being sold for textile. How awful is that?!?

As if we hadn't seen enough... we moved on to our last block, this time where some of the prisoners lived. The walls were covered with pictures of inmates who had been in Auschwitz.

Hallway of photos of prisoners

Walking through the camp left me with a heavy heart. Listening of all the things they did to the prisoners is just so cruel! I can't even begin to imagine how hard it must have been for them to live under those conditions, to live a life not knowing if your loved ones were dead or alive, to live a life you probably didn't particularly want but hope got them through every day. The hardest thing is that for those who lost hope, those who decided it was enough and that they would rather get a bullet and die didn't die alone, for one suicide ten other deaths followed to show prisoners who was in charge. Such a horrific time in life, but the question is... have we learned anything from it? My answer would be no... Genocide is not in the past, genocide is something the world should have learned about and done something about it. Just like some well known people told other nations about the genocide happening in Poland we are aware of genocide happening in Iraq and Syria and Yemen, and Chad and so on... and we (as one world) are not doing enough about it...

I guess I wasn't the only one with the heavy heart!

Guards stood there and shop anybody trying to escape

Double barbed wire!

We finished the tour of Auschwitz I by checking out the one gas chamber left.

From there we took a bus into Auschwitz II: BIRKENAU.

The sight of Birkenau was very different, we went up to the tower and most of what you could see from there were only the many remaining chimneys standing. Many of the first original blocks were made out of wood and they burned down or were dismantled to use the wood for the victims to provide shelter after the liberation.

It was crazy to see the train tracks and imagine how many thousands of people came to the camp in those wagons and were immediately murdered. Birkenau was not another work camp, Birkenau was especially made for annihilation, specifically for mass annihilation... killing the most people the fastest!

One of our first stops was at a burnt crematoria building where the guide explained the whole process. I can't imagine all the pain those burnt walls witnessed, I can't also imagine how men got together and thought that making a death factory was a good idea!

We then continued to the International Monument where we found plaques in many European languages, all saying:

"FOR EVER LET THIS PLACE BE A CRY OF DESPAIR AND A WARNING TO HUMANITY, WHERE THE NAZIS MURDERED ABOUT ONE AND A HALF MILLION MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN MAINLY JEWS FROM VARIOUS COUNTRIES OF EUROPE.

AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU 1940-1945"

We moved on to the other side of the camp, to the newer blocks made out of bricks that survived after liberation.
Many of these blocks served as rooms, crematorium, wash rooms etc.

The crematorium

One of the last blocks we visited was the saddest one, where they kept children!
For some reason some of the children didn't go directly to one of the killing chambers and they were kept there. Jewish children were not allowed to go to school but in here they were taught, and one of the kids even painted the walls.

Going to school

How the bunks looked like

On the way out I saw this plaque "For the memory of the French patriots killed by the Hitlerians in this camp"

And the last thing I saw was this memorial for the children who were illegally used for medical experiments.

My tour ended after almost four hours of listening to all the tragedies that happened in Auschwitz, I think I left depressed and horrified. I have been to other camps and seen pretty much every single holocaust/WWII museum there is in the countries I have been but in this camp there was a different kind of energy. I think the more people that visit this place and museums about the Holocaust and get more information about what happened the more aware we become about history but we also have to realize that for the Poles, the Germans, and many countries in Europe this is the past but we also need to be aware that genocide is still much part of this world and we need to hear more about, we need to do more about it, and we have to learn from the past so we can prevent more tragedies in the future.

About Post Author

Andrea

Hi! It's me... Andrea! In 2016 I decided to drop everything and take a year to enrich my life and travel around the world. It turns out the world is just too big for 12 months! Still on the road and sharing my experience as a solo female traveler around the globe!