March 24

 Day 14:  Auschwitz & Birkenau

Today was a somber day in many ways, but in other ways it was just really hard to wrap your head around what we were seeing.  Especially for me, because I taught World History for several years and part of the curriculum was World War II, the Nazi movement and the concentration camps.  So I am very familiar with a lot of the details of what happened here in Auschwitz nd Birkenau.  But seeing it in person, the actual places and items it was just really hard to imagine how this all really happened.  We were in the lobby by 6am for a "6:10am sharp" departure as our Viking host asked us.  And we were told we needed to have a photo ID with us.  She told us this multiple times.  We were all there ready to go at 6:10 and she asked, does everyone have their ID and one lady - who's been "interesting" let's say - throughout the extension said, "I didn't know we were doing that today."  WOW.  Our rooms are on the second floor and the elevators are right in the lobby but we all sat on the bus for more than ten minutes waiting on her.  WOW squared :O  The drive was about 90 minutes long and about a 45 minute video was shown about the liberation of the camps - hard to watch.  We met our guide and spent more than two hours going through the various buildings and having the whole thing explained.  The two things that I didn't know that I learned about Auschwitz were:  (1) the Auschwitz complex consisted of multiple camps and was all in about a 15 square mile area; and (2) the main camp where we visited was originally an army camp so they have brick buildings, not the commonly seen wooden ones you see in films (though that WAS what we saw at the Birkenau camp).  The rooms and areas would have been small for the 15 of us in our group, but when we were told that 100 or more would be forced into these spaces it was just so difficult to imagine.  After the extended time in this camp we drove the five minutes to the Birkenau death camp.  We were only here about 40 minutes but here the conditions were just so much worse and hard to believe what happened here.  We returned to Krakow, arriving about 1pm and had lunch.  Then in the evening we had a dinner at a traditional Jewish restaurant - that was fun.

Tomorrow we leave the hotel a little after 8am and will tour a local monastery and then we will hit the road for a several hour trip to Warsaw, our final stop of the trip. 

Walking up to Auschwitz

The gate where prisoners were "welcomed" - with an orchestra playing just to the right in the photo

The barracks/buildings of Auschwitz

The statistics about the camp are staggering

A guard tower

Actual (not recreations) uniforms / hundreds of photos lined the walls (close up - each prisoner had three shots taken)

The Jewish people truly thought they were being relocated so they brought everything they could carry/thought they'd need.  Only to have it confiscated.

Crutches-walkers, etc. (top photo) / Pots-pans-dishes (bottom right)

Cannisters for storing the Zyclon B gas pellets (bottom left)

Thousands of shoes (left) - suitcases (right)

The "Killing Wall" where executions by gunfire took place 

The double-fenced area between the camp and the gas chambers

Entrance into gas chambers - note smokestack for incinerators at right

The commandant's home where he & his family is just yards behind where I'm standing taking the photo.  And also his garden where his children played!

Inside the gas chamber

The next room to the gas chambers, the incinerators for cremating the bodies

Birkenau

The "Death Gate" - over 1 million Jews entered here, never to come out

The view on the railroad tracks entering the gate into the camp

The barracks

Inside the barracks....two sides, three-tiered "beds"

Close-up of the "beds" - our group of 14 Viking guests would have been placed into two beds....seven in each one

The communal bathroom building

Jewish Dinner/Performance

A traditional Jewish dinner followed by a musical performance to end the day