I woke up to the tapping pen against the window of the train conductor who was returning our tickets. I had thought they would need to check our passport but apparently didn't.
About 30 minutes later we pulled into Krakow train station. We quickly repacked our bags and stepped into the frigid Polish air. It was much colder than Prague. Our train was an hour late as it was 7:30am. This actually worked in our favor as we had less time to wait at the bus station to catch the bus to Oswiecim, the city outside of the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. From the train station, we walked through the underground tunnel and arrived at the bus station. The next bus to Oswiecim was at 7:50. We bought our tickets and climbed abroad the small, public bus.
It was very cramped and cold, but we were able to see some of the country side and city as the bus picked people up on the way to Oswiecim.
The bus ride was 1 and a half hours with the Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau its last stop. We got out and walked the last two hundred yards in the 3 feet of snow to the museum entrance. Cold. Still. I took some pictures of the buildings and prepared myself.
Entering the visitor's center, Jon and I checked in our bags and bought the all access visitor's tickets to the video, guided tour and Birkenau. We then walked outside and saw the infamous gate with the cynical sign in German, "Work is Liberating."
The live footage documentary video of Auschwitz-Birkenau's liberation in 1945 was terrible and powerful. It lasted for 15 minutes and showed the liberation of the camp and some of the atrocities committed by the Nazis.
We then met up with our tour guide, a small, pretty, Polish women who spoke perfect English in a strong accent but with a soothing tone. Over the next 2 and a half hours we toured Auschwitz, seeing the terrible evidence of tons of human hair, glasses, shoes, and belongings of the murdered victims. We saw the terrible torture rooms and the small house where the head SS officer lived with his family. We saw the room of Joseph Mengele, the Nazi "doctor," who did terrible experiments on women and children. I was very sad, depressed, but above all angry. Auschwitz was unbelievable. One cannot imagine the scale, magnitude, or sheer number of innocent people killed for no reason. I didn't want to believe that there could ever be a hate so strong, so desensitizing that something like the Holocaust would happen. Our last stop was inside one of the gas chambers where thousands of people had been murdered.
We had a 20 minute break before our next stop at the even larger death camp of Birkenau. Everyone was silent and a lot of people were crying. Jon and I sat down trying to warm our feet by the radiator. I was suffering from the cold and had only been outside for a little more than an hour. How the prisoners, how anyone, was able to survive the sheer climate is beyond me. I had a large jacket and was freezing. Imagine thin cotton pajamas. Impossible. I was "glad" to see Auschwitz in the winter and snow, as I was able to "appreciate," understand, the overall suffering and cruelty even more.
The bus over to Birkenau was a quick 3 km ride. We met the tour guide at the front gate and walked into the unbelievably large 400 acre death camp. For as far as I could see there were shoddy wooden buildings, guard towers and barbed wire. We saw the terrible sleeping bunks and toilet facilities. We walked the 15 minute walk a long the lane, covered in snow until we came to a memorial to the victims. Never Forget. Never Repeat. We saw the destroyed gas chambers and crematoriums. From this part of Birkenau, I had a haunting view of the train station and the and the tracks that took the cattle cars of Jews, Gypies, Poles, and others to their deaths. The moon peeked its waning shell and the whole scene froze in time like a scar that will never and should never be forgotten.
Jon and I walked the 15 minutes back, my toes and fingers numb. I stood up straight and thought of the people who had died and no longer felt the cold.
Leaving the gates of Birkenau, I really couldn't describe the emotion.
Powerful. Terrible. Indescribable.
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