Polly Want a Krakow?

Krakow, Poland is just how I pictured it, cold, rainy/snowy and bare. We visited the old Jewish sector that was once a place where all of the traditional Jews lived before WWII. We took a walking tour around the city which we have not done since we were in Rome, possibly. It felt nice to walk around for a 4 hours instead of walking on and off a bus all day.

Next we walked to a castle that many royalty have inhabited and was greatly damaged by the destruction of WWII. We did learn that Krakow didn't get hit by the Germans nearly as bad as Warsaw did, and was able to rebuild itself a lot easier than other cities. The guide made a lot of references to Schindler's List which I have not seen, but I imagine I will get a lot out of it if I were to watch it now. This courtyard was apparently in the movie or one just like it.

These are just a few images of Krakow and what it has to offer and you can easily see what I meant when I said it was dark and bare. But soon after this the sun came out and it really changed my point of view. It was incredible how a little sun can change a perception of a city.

We ended at the Market Square that has a lot to offer a starving student. I had the most amazing kabab there that was huge and incredibly cheap which is always the best combination. Next we headed back to the hotel to do some homework and then meet again to go to a group dinner at a US Consolate's house that is the father of a friend of one of our group members that joined us for spring break.  Follow that? They have a personal chef and servers that had what seemed to be an unlimited supply of beer for a while as we ate DELICIOUS food and mingled amongst ourselves.

Today we went to Auschwitz. I was somewhat dreading this because we all know the incredible horror that went on in that place. We were required to read Primo Levi's book "Survival in Auschwitz" for class so we were somewhat familiar with more detail about what went on there. On the way we watched a movie on the coach that was only in Polish or German so the guide muted it and did commentary. The images I saw were unbelievable. Although I feel as though I know a lot about The Holocaust, I still learned so much just from that movie. The images that stuck out the most to me where the experiments that they did on small children and identical twins for absolutely no good reason. I just have so much trouble understanding the hate, the complete disregard for people. They tricked them into thinking they were going to take a shower when they were actually going to be exterminated in the gas chambers. They brought suitcases of all of their most treasured belongings because they thought they were just moving to another place instead of going to Auschwitz. Some even had to buy the train ticket that brought them to the camp that was jam packed with people with no food or bathroom and no air.

Its just so tragic. Everyone was silent as we passed through rooms filled with shoes, glasses, hair, and combs. All of these items were just a small sample of what was actually collected and sold to Germans for profit.

Block 11 was nicknamed Hell Block. This is where they took prisoners to be held in a cell and be tortured, and starved.

This is called the wall of death. This is where they lined people up to shoot them. The flowers were laid there by family members honoring their loved ones. The windows and entire courtyard was closed off so no one could see in or get out. Yikes.

This image is from the larger camp Auschwitz II that was 12 times larger than Auschwitz I where we took our tour. Here are just rows and rows of barracks that housed hundreds of thousands of people in impossible living conditions. The barracks themselves are rebuilt because when the Germans were evacuating, they tried to bomb most of the evidence that they had ever done any wrong. The thousands of bodies were enough evidence.

This was a hard day as you can imagine. I'm still reeling from it all and I just thought that you all would be interested in seeing some images from the museum. The hard to stomach images that were taken at the time of The Holocaust were inside barracks which are not allowed to be photographed. This was fine simply because that is not something that I wish to look over again in the near future.

I made it through though. I was able to make it through the incredible emotional taxing day without crying even when we toured the gas chambers and I saw the claw marks on the walls. Its just....