Poland Part 2

I’m sorry that it has been an eternity since I last posted, but mid-terms tests and trip planning have been devouring most of my time.  Here is a brief overview of what I would like to tell you about in the next few posts: the rest of my Poland trip, Hallstatt Austria, Florence Italy, Rome Italy, Assisi Italy, London England, Paris France, the Normandy region of France, and Nice France (currently I am waiting for a train that will get me a little bit closer to Nice, and if all goes well I will be there by morning).

Anyway, after Czestochowa, we got back on our bus to visit Auschwitz, the former Nazi death camp.  Auschwitz began as a work camp for Polish political prisoners, before it became a full-blown death camp.  The camp was run and managed by Rudolf Höss.  We got to visit two parts of the complex.  Auschwitz 1, which was a converted Polish military post and Auschwitz 2 Birkenau which was the actual extermination camp.  Auschwitz 1 was primarily for the political prisoners and such.  St. Maximillian Kolbe was held in Auschwitz 1.  Auschwitz 1 was the site of: horrific Nazi medical experiments on prisoners, the first gas chamber, and the standing and starvation cells.  Auschwitz 2 Birkenau was a much larger camp where captured Jews were forced to live until they were either killed or worked to death. 

The gate of Auschwitz 1, it says “Arbeit Macht Frei,” which means “work makes you free.”  According to Professor Cassady, this is the biggest lie in all of history.

One of the buildings in Auschwitz 1, most of them looked a lot like this one.

A sleeping room for some of the female prisoners. These were the best conditions available for any of the prisoners as far as I can tell.

A wall where prisoners were executed by firing squad in Auschwitz 1.

St. Maximilan Kolbe’s cell.

This was a model of the primary gas chambers.  The real gas chambers were destroyed by the Nazis before the end of the war in an attempt to conceal evidence of their crimes. (One gas chamber wasn’t destroyed, but it wasn’t one of the main ones, it was mainly just a facility used to test the effectiveness of the gas (on Russian prisoners I think)).

Here is a room full of the canisters that held the poison for the gas chambers.

This is a room entirely filled with the shoes of holocaust victims.

Much like the other photo, this is a picture of a room filled with the belongings of holocaust victims. 

Of all of the things that I saw in Auschwitz, this was by far the most disturbing.  It was a display of things that belonged to children and infants that were murdered in Auschwitz.  Along with this display, there was a room filled with children’s and infant’s shoes.

This is Auschwitz 2 Birkenau.  All that is really left is the field, a few foundations, the train tracks, and a building or two.

The train tracks into Birkenau.

This is a blurry picture of our group touring the sleeping quarters in Birkenau.  The wooden structures in the back were beds; if I remember correctly, each level held about six prisoners (more than inhumane considering the conditions).