Auschwitz

[herecomesaregular]

I went. Would I recommend it? No. I regret going. There's no way of getting away from it, if you have a soul, it is a thoroughly depressing experience (I know that's stating the obvious but I felt quite down for sometime after, it affected me strongly). Remember it yes, visit it no. Go somewhere joyous and celebrate life.

 

[The Brighton Buzz]

You should and you won't ENJOY it, but you'll be glad you went.

Auschwitz made me angry and heartbroken in equal measures, but it's Birkenau up the road that really hits hard. The sheer SCALE of it is horrific.

This. Ten of us went on a Lads weekend to Krakow. As it was so close we went to Auschwitz. It really hits home, but we were all in agreement that it was good call to go.

 

[moggy]

Treblinka was a weird one, it's where the Nazis burned and buried 250,000 Jews at least. Today it's a dead end railway and monolithic stones to mark the camp. There must be millions of bits of bone and teeth under your feet as you walk around it. Very unsettling place.

Always wanted to go there, having been to auschwitch and teresienstadt.
Have you seen "Shoah" 4 disc dvd box set. If not, get it online

 

[hans kraay fan club]

I went to Auschwitz with a group from my University. We all walked around in stunned silence, but there was a girl with us who was particularly affected. We got back on the coach and she completely broke down.

I spoke to her later, when she'd calmed down, and it turned out, her father had been amongst the British troops who liberated Bergen-Belsen in 1945. They were completely unprepared for what they found and he went on to suffer mental problems for the rest of his life as a result. Conditions for the prisoners at Belsen were so awful, that 28000 of the 38000 prisoners that were liberated in the camp, died in the days and weeks afterwards.

 

[JOLovegrove]

As many have said, it's a place that everyone should try and visit at some point in there life. Harrowing and thought provoking at the same time, it feels like the closest thing to we have of hell on earth. The one thing that shocked me is just how commercialized it is and just how vast the car park was with book shops and cafes attached to it. Just seemed so wrong.

But, yes, go visit, is well worth it. Try and take it all in if you can.

 

[Bevendean Hillbilly]

Always wanted to go there, having been to auschwitch and teresienstadt.
Have you seen "Shoah" 4 disc dvd box set. If not, get it online

Thanks for the heads up.

 

[hans kraay fan club]

As many have said, it's a place that everyone should try and visit at some point in there life. Harrowing and thought provoking at the same time, it feels like the closest thing to we have of hell on earth. The one thing that shocked me is just how commercialized it is and just how vast the car park was with book shops and cafes attached to it. Just seemed so wrong.

When did you go? i went in 1990 and there was nothing like that, then.

 

[Seagull1989]

Vegas is tacky and definitely not a place to go with the other half .... always wanted to go to Auschwitz and think it will be a lot more moving than a few casinos in Vegas

 

[Rohana]

I remember reading somebody (Can't for the life of me remember who.) say how traveling to somewhere like Auschwitz felt wrong, as you knew what you were going in to and could at least slightly prepare yourself. They had been driving through Europe and stumbled across a similar site of Nazi atrocity. Although not on the same scale as Auschwitz, the fact he hadn't planned to end up there had made it more chilling then when they visited Auschwitz a few years later.

That's my plan, as I would love to travel Central Europe, however if by the age of 50 I still haven't seen many things like it then I do plan to visit Auschwitz. Being a kid still (20 next week) I'm obviously too young to understand what it must have been like, but I can remember my Granddad talking about when he would have snowball fights with Canadian troops who never returned home etc, and I'd like to see what they were fighting for.

A couple of years ago I was on a family holiday in Northern France. We'd been at the beach a couple of hours when it dawned on me - We were in Normandy... on the beach. Soon as I realised everything changed. I'm not normally an emotional person and I'm certainly not patriotic but I was very close to shedding a tear when it dawned on me that the very stretch of sand I was on was the place where thousands of brave British/American/Candaian/Indian troops took their last breath after sacrificing themselves for our freedom, some of them no older than me. I managed to convince my family to visit the military grave sites for both American and British troops. I don't think the whole thing would have hit me like it did if it had all been planned out beforehand.

Edit: I've probably worded some of this horribly, nothing was meant in an offensive manner. Probably not the smartest post to try and construct after a few pints.

 

[JOLovegrove]

When did you go? i went in 1990 and there was nothing like that, then.

2010 ish? Possibly only one cafe which we went in, but still seemed to make it all too busy and trying to make money out of it. Still think it was an astonishing place to go.

 

[pishhead]

I'd love to go, the preservation of our history no matter how dark is vital for our generation and for future generations.
Whilst on a weekend trip to Munich we decided on a whim to visit Dachau whilst not on the same scale as Auschwitz it is a thoroughly worth while trip. It particularly affected my other half who is in fact German.

 

[sparkie]

I went. Would I recommend it? No. I regret going. There's no way of getting away from it, if you have a soul, it is a thoroughly depressing experience (I know that's stating the obvious but I felt quite down for sometime after, it affected me strongly). Remember it yes, visit it no. Go somewhere joyous and celebrate life.

This what stops me from going. I've been to Krakow countless times, but to see that place would destroy me.

 

[colonies man]

Go but not on your 30th not really birthday fun.I've been twice,second time took my grown up son and its power to shock remained.30th birthday still piss-up time not a time for somber reflection.

 

[Jesus Gul]

I did both Vegas and Auschwitz last year funnily enough.

Auschwitz was definitely worth a visit - we were staying in Wroclaw on a boys weekend away - great city as I'd imagine Krakow to be - cheap as chips too.

I wasn't really that affected by it but it is sobering. Bit creepy we were there exactly 70 years from the day some of the inmates were hanged and the gallows were on show. There's two sites - you must visit them both.

What was touching was the number of weeping Israeli kids there on organised tours with their flags draped over their shoulders.

As for Vegas...can't remember much of it but there was a few of us cheering on Brighton v Leicester in the sports bar of Planet Hollywood at 7am after a night at the tables

 

[bhafc99]

Auschwitz made me angry and heartbroken in equal measures, but it's Birkenau up the road that really hits hard. The sheer SCALE of it is horrific.

I went to Auschwitz and Birkenau in 1994. At the time, i found Auschwitz moving and educational, but the coach parties and so on did jar a little.

Me and the guys I was with then walked up the road to Birkenau. There was hardly anyone else there. You could walk around the whole site – the railway platform where the 'sorting' was done, the endless rows of huts, the remains of the gas chambers, everything. We spent hours there in absolute silence. None of us was able to talk.

I went back in 2008 with my wife. You can no longer visit much of Birkenau. It's deteriorating fast, and in a decade or so many of the wooden structures etc might be almost gone completely. Therefore access is now controlled and limited to a couple of huts by the entrance, and the main tower, in order to help preserve as much as possible. I feel even more humbled to have had the chance to visit as I had 15 years previously, as the impact it had on me is no longer available to people.

I've also been to Belsen and Majdanek, not that I'm a concentration camp junkie or anything, just I've visited a lot of eastern Europe.

Majdanek (also visited in 1994) was particularly moving. It doesn't attract visitors like some of the others do, as it's in a less touristy part of Poland, and I was pretty much the only person there on a cold and wintry day. The isolation and loneliness amplified everything. The Nazis failed to destroy this camp before the Russians arrived, so it's the best 'preserved' of them all. Even the gas chambers are still there. In 2005, four Majdanek survivors even returned to help dig up some 50 objects which had been buried by inmates, including watches, earrings, and wedding rings – something you couldn't imagine happening at Auschwitz, with its coach parties, audio tours, café, thousands of visitors and so on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majdanek

 

[Racek]

Birkenau hit home more for me as to the size of the operation. Was one of the most eye opening experiences I have ever had.

I started a thread on it a few years ago. See If I can find it.

 

[Racek]

O/T Auschwitz


Although I have seemed to have changed my opinion

 

[hans kraay fan club]

O/T Auschwitz

I'd echo [MENTION=10202]Not Andy Naylor[/MENTION] comments in that thread, that to visit the Museum in the Jewish Quarter of Krakow is also important.
Birkenau is so vast, so 'industrial', that its easy to get fixated by the NUMBERS. The museum brings it home that these numbers were real, ordinary people.

 

[half time scores]

I went to Auschwitz with a group from my University. We all walked around in stunned silence, but there was a girl with us who was particularly affected. We got back on the coach and she completely broke down.

I spoke to her later, when she'd calmed down, and it turned out, her father had been amongst the British troops who liberated Bergen-Belsen in 1945. They were completely unprepared for what they found and he went on to suffer mental problems for the rest of his life as a result. Conditions for the prisoners at Belsen were so awful, that 28000 of the 38000 prisoners that were liberated in the camp, died in the days and weeks afterwards.

My father was one of those British troops, he did not mention this even to my mother until the 1980's.
He was put on a charge for handing his rations out to the inmates when he got there. His punishment was spud bashing. this was done in a barbed wire compound surrounded by thousands of inmates just looking at the food, It was their eyes that got to him.

 

[Cadiz Seagull]

It's a literally unbelievable place although I found Birkenau more unbelievable if that's possible. It's huge - murder on an industrial scale.

Everybody should go there once.

But no, it won't help you understand man's inhumanity to man. That's incomprehensible.

But it will show you what man - and woman - is capable of.