Ghosts
Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum, Poland
One of the great reasons for any travel, either before or after you've visited a city or a country is to investigate the history of an area, and to make sense of how this may have impacted and shaped the present era.
Some events will exert a subtle influence over many years, others will be so cataclysmic that you are left wondering how a return to any way of life is possible.
Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum is a forty minute drive south-west of Krakow.
It is a deeply affecting place.
It is difficult to reconcile the atrocities and mass murder that took place here in Auschwitz I with the modern red bricked buildings sitting along the tree-lined avenues. You can become numbed at the sheer horror of the incredulous facts told expertly by the historians and educators as you are guided around the site.
Each barrack contains exhibitions and displays. They follow the German Nazi occupation of Poland, from the formation of the ghettos, the building and of the camps and the systematic deportation to ultimately, the evolution of concentration camp to extermination camp.
The tour of Auschwitz I culminates by visiting a surviving gas chamber, only a stones throw from the Nazi Commandant's large family house where he lived with his wife and and five children.
The museum is pivotal part of the Holocaust story and one that will leave you with more questions than answers.
The camp at Birkenau, or Auschwitz II is a few kilometers away, and is a bleak and desolate sight. The railway line cuts through the infamous main gate and tower block into the heart of the camp. At the end of the track is where it was decided to send the new arrivals to the barracks or to the gas chambers.
There are few exhibitions here. There doesn't need to be.
Whilst most of the brick barracks remain standing, only a few wooden barracks have survived intact. A poignant image is of the rows and rows of brick chimneys, the only surviving piece of the wooden barracks, stretching as far as the eye can see.
The scale of the mass murder that took place here is unfathomable.
If you can possibly take one small piece of comfort away from a visit here, it is that the education and desire to never forget, means that anyone who does visit will come away with a disbelief that this was ever allowed to happen and a resolve that it must never happen again.
One of the great reasons for any travel, either before or after you've visited a city or a country is to investigate the history of an area, and to make sense of how this may have impacted and shaped the present era.
Some events will exert a subtle influence over many years, others will be so cataclysmic that you are left wondering how a return to any way of life is possible.
 |
| Auschwitz I, Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum |
Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum is a forty minute drive south-west of Krakow.
It is a deeply affecting place.
It is difficult to reconcile the atrocities and mass murder that took place here in Auschwitz I with the modern red bricked buildings sitting along the tree-lined avenues. You can become numbed at the sheer horror of the incredulous facts told expertly by the historians and educators as you are guided around the site.
Each barrack contains exhibitions and displays. They follow the German Nazi occupation of Poland, from the formation of the ghettos, the building and of the camps and the systematic deportation to ultimately, the evolution of concentration camp to extermination camp.
The tour of Auschwitz I culminates by visiting a surviving gas chamber, only a stones throw from the Nazi Commandant's large family house where he lived with his wife and and five children.
The museum is pivotal part of the Holocaust story and one that will leave you with more questions than answers.
The camp at Birkenau, or Auschwitz II is a few kilometers away, and is a bleak and desolate sight. The railway line cuts through the infamous main gate and tower block into the heart of the camp. At the end of the track is where it was decided to send the new arrivals to the barracks or to the gas chambers.
 |
| Auschwitz II, Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum |
There are few exhibitions here. There doesn't need to be.
Whilst most of the brick barracks remain standing, only a few wooden barracks have survived intact. A poignant image is of the rows and rows of brick chimneys, the only surviving piece of the wooden barracks, stretching as far as the eye can see.
The scale of the mass murder that took place here is unfathomable.
If you can possibly take one small piece of comfort away from a visit here, it is that the education and desire to never forget, means that anyone who does visit will come away with a disbelief that this was ever allowed to happen and a resolve that it must never happen again.
I've been twice, both times with school. Its astonishing. I think everyone should go at least once.
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