The most notable thing I did in Krakow was visit the Auschwitz concentration camp from WW2. It was a seriously deep and sobering tour that I am very glad I took part in.
The Auschwitz camp itself was very precisely picked by the Germans. It was situated away from any nearby towns (its over an hour drive from Krakow), but also at a major crossway meaning trains and transport would not be a problem using existing infrastructure. Very methodical.
The stats below show just how much of the genocide took place on the site that I was standing. Millions of people - its very harrowing.
Below is a small percentage of the cans of the poison used to gas those unlucky souls. The poison came in pellet form but when exposed to air would turn into a gas that would suffocate the victims, with average time of death taking around twenty minutes, as they cough up blood from their lungs.
They also had on display the old possessions of those who were bought to the site. Many people were told they were simply being relocated and to pack a suitcase with what they would need to start life over, and write their name, country and transport number on the case.
Probably one of the most disturbing facets of the concentration camp was how much money the Nazi's were making in doing this. Apart from searching and collecting all valuable possessions from those that were bought in, anyone with hair longer than 2cm had it cut off and collected for use in textile factories back in Germany. Tonnes upon tonnes of hair was collected from the victims, with the the price of which up in the millions. One display (where photos were prohibited out of respect) shows some of the hair that was collected during the camps operation. The Nazi's were ruthless and calculated.
The site itself was divided up into three camps in total - Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II - Birkenau and Auschwitz III - Monowitz. These days the first has been turned into a memorial museum, the second left in its more-or-less original state and the third not used for tourism.
Auschwitz II - Birkenau is just massive. Housing somewhere near 100,000 prisoners at any one time, most of which were kept on rotation - new people came in, the existing were killed off.
The living conditions of those in the camps was terrible as you might imagine. People would both freeze to death or get chewed on by rats and catch various diseases.
I could continue to write more about what I learnt on the tour but the main points worth knowing is just how methodical the Nazi regime was. They were constantly improving their process of exterminating and burning the bodies of humans, as well as making money from every part they could. People were treated like cows to the slaughter.
After Auschwitz I left thinking that I don't need to see much more morbid, horrific sites in the world for a while. This year I have visited the A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields in Phnom Penh, the War Remnants Museum in Saigon and now Auschwitz in Krakow. I have seen the memorials to places where hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives. Let's hope we learn from the past and such atrocities are never repeated.
