Krakow, Poland

[Lotsokids]

I've taken my family to Krakow, Poland for a short vacation. It's nice to relax a little with the wife and kids.

Tomorrow we will be visiting Auschwitz concentration camp. I've done some research already. It's very sobering. Some friends of mine have visited and said it's educational, but very depressing. Hard to believe something like that could happen just a relatively short time ago.

Then we'll try a pick-me-up by visiting the salt mines, which I heard were very cool.

Off to city center today. I'll post some pictures in this thread later.

[FJ Flyer]

Hope to get Poland someday to visit the towns where my grandparents were from.

I've been to the Holocaust Museum in DC a couple times, and that itself was emotionally draining.  Can't imagine what a camp would be like.

[jwh]

i thought krakow was a really nice place, thought they rushed you through auschwitz a bit quickly, but the salt mines are excellent and well worth a visit, took a trabbie round nova huta which was good as well. will definitley go back some time.

[Lotsokids]

Well, there are 2 Auschwitz camps. Auschwitz I was the original, then they built Auschwitz II that held a MASSIVE amount of people with 2 gas chambers and crematoriums exterminating 1.5 million people just at that one location. That's hard to comprehend. It's sobering to walk down the same path that thousands of people walked to their death. It's hard to describe the size of Auschwitz II. It seems like barracks as far as you can see.

Here a few pictures from today.

Auschwitz I



"Wall of Death" where they executed prisoners by firing squad. You can still see the bullet holes.



Auschwitz II



Entrance


Rail's end inside the camp (very close to the gas chambers and crematoriums)


This is the entrance to the gas chamber. There is a wooded area on the left where I remember seeing old pictures of that spot where people undressed preparing to go into the gas chamber. That's a creepy feeling standing in the same spot.


Rail car sitting in the spot where they made their "selection" of who would work and who would die.

[FJ Flyer]

Sobering. 

[1tinindian]

Sickening subject, but one that needs to be told.
Awesome pictures.
I never realized so much of the structures were still standing.
Truly mind-boggling.

Leon

[Shaun]

And with these structures still standing, history written and pictures like this can you believe that in this day and age there are some people that still deny that it ever happened. This is why the people of our great countries stand in uniform, so that this kind of thing never happens again and if it is tried the proper corrective action will be taken.

Shaun

[terryk]

You can still find remnants of many others if just the names driving across Europe.

Drive through Germany and there are still signs and towns that strike terror. Buchenwald (by Weimar), Dachau (by Muncih). Oh, those are the train track that transported the doomed, still there. Still used to transport.

Hang in Nuremberg and bring a book showing Hitlers rallies, buildings are still there and you can quickly see where the action took place.

Hitler addressed the citizens of Austria after the union of Aystria and Germany from Vienna standing on the Habsburg palace balcony, still there and I think (memory) 50,000 people came out to hear Hitler speak). I stood where the crowds listened to Hitler and gave him a finger even though he was long gone.

But to be fair appalling human history is elsewhere. I was lucky enough to find the dungeons in the bazzar where the slaves were held in Tunis before being sold and shipped. I found where they held the actual auctions, all still there.

[Bill_Rockoff]

What excellent photos.  Thanks for posting and sharing. 

My next-door neighbors growing up were from Hungary/Yugoslavia, three generations - the couple was about 10 years younger than my parents, their kids were a few years younger than my siblings, and the grandfather living with them had numbers tattooed on his wrist.

My immediate family was all here in the US by then (my grandfather came from Ukraine, I believe, when he was 9) but it's still a story I feel compelled to pass on to my son, lest he forget (half of) his roots.