Top Poland Day Trips - page 19

Jerry our driver was super organized before, during and after our tour - a great communicator. He shared a lot of interesting information and pointed out many sights in and around Krakow. On the way back from the mines he detoured to show and explain the Jewish Ghetto and Schindler's factory. He also shared eating and drinking recommendations with us. He certainly went the extra mile. Highly recommend him and the tour.

The visit was an overwhelming confirmation of how terrible this was for those brought to the camps. That people could actually treat other people like this is hard to believe. However, it is happening again in other places. There was a comment posted in the beginning of the tour “Those that don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” By George Santayana. I suggest everyone learn about the holocaust, and the years leading up to it because there is a definite pattern recognizable to those who are paying attention. Marta was our guide and was quite good. Our driver, Bartek, was great as well.

This tour makes for a very long day with a lot of walking - but very much worth it. Make sure you have a good breakfast, because the lunch break isn’t until ~14h. The company does offer the purchase (in advance) of a sack lunch. The guides and tours were excellent. Well worth the price. The below was what I posted about the day on social media; Today we visited Auschwitz and Birkenau. Having visited Dachau several times, I thought I was prepared for the emotional shock. Auschwitz I is large. Auschwitz II-Birkenau is huge. The endless rows of barracks, fences, guard towers, and rail lines make clear that this was not simply mass murder. It was industrialized murder. Planned, organized, staffed, supplied, and carried out with horrifying efficiency. The displays of the children’s shoes & clothes, left behind luggage, and piles of women’s hair - the rejected materials collected by the Nazi’s but seen as not worth sending to loyalists in Germany. They floored me. The pictures that the Germans took of their inhuman processes - I still can’t process why and how. Reading about it and seeing it are two different things. Standing where the trains arrived, walking the grounds, and seeing the remains of what was built there leaves a lasting impression that no book or documentary can fully replicate. At the far end of Birkenau, near the ruins of the crematoria, a plaque reads: “For ever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, where the Nazis murdered about one and a half million men, women, and children, mainly Jews from various countries of Europe. Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1940-1945.” Everyone should visit at least one of these places if they have the opportunity. Not to dwell on the past, but to understand how ordinary people and institutions can be led to accept the exclusion, dehumanization, and persecution of others. These sites are reminders that the process begins long before the violence. It begins when people believe that some human beings are less than human.