Krakow & Oswiecim (Auschwitz)

Krakow pics (hope to return there & take some more!)

After some time of numerous attempts of going to Krakow, me & Filipa, finally made it! The two of us and some German friends manage to find some free time to visit this city, of which everyone was talking about. And what a great city it is! Full of history, great buildings, and with a great night-life! We managed to stay in a great hostel in the city center, just next to the Rynek of Krakow. We also had in mind to take this chance, and do something that everyone that is Poland for some time, should do. After one great day in the city we headed over to the concentration camps in Oswiecim (Auschwitz). We knew it would be a hard experience, but we were anxious to go there and testify, by our selves, one of the remaining "items" of the Nazi "horror era". When we got to Auschwitz I (the main concentration camp, although smaller), it was hard to realize what kind of crimes were really committed there. We visited the museum, where there was an exhibition (in the old camaratas of the prisoners), that contained, among other things, a lot of belongings of the poor souls that where trapped there. For instance, they had in one of the rooms, something like 2000kg of human hair (every prisoner should shave the head), in the other thousands of shoes, reading glasses, prostesic limbs. It was quite hard to deal with that reality.But the worst was still to come... Bierknau. When you get to Bierknau, there's a sudden' silence, as you get a glimpse of the famous tower with the trains entrance below. The same tower that appeared in the Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List". That tower, and it's gates where the last entrance for 1.5 millions of people. And when I went to the top of it, and got a glimpse of the camp itself... I lost my speech. You just can't see the end of the thing! It's huge. You can see some of the wooden houses (if it is possible to call it house...), and the remainings of the ones that were destroyed. If keeping in mind that each house had 1000 men inside, and that there were hundreds of them through out all the camp... I mean, it's quite chocking to learn it in school, and read about it, but face it, there, in front of you... It just makes you wonder, what the hell were those people thinking???... And the amazing thing about it, is that all of this occurred not even 60 years ago! I think everyone should visit this place. There you can really get an idea of what mankind is able to do, when it looses all sense of humanity.
For further information on these monuments, I'll leave you here the link to the official site of Oswiecim (Auschwitz) Concentration Camps: http://www.auschwitz.org.pl/ Take a look, you won't regret it...

Auschwitz I

Bierknau (Auschwitz II)