Last Week In Poland and a visit to Auschwitz- not pleasant reading!

[Dave the OAP]

Went to Krakow in Poland on Thu/Fri/Sat and Sunday last week and would just like to say, that if anyone wants a cheap few days in a very beautiful city, with rediculously cheap drink and good food, then Krakow is the place.

I will post a link to my yahoo photo's site tonight if anyone fancies a look at the place.

Went to Auschwitz/Birkenau on Friday and anything you see on the telly or read in books etc cannot in any way prepare yourself for what you witness with your own eyes.

Auschwitz 1, the main one you see on the telly ( big prison blocks etc) is very much like any prison you could imagine and in most of the blocks there was an "exhibition " of chattels etc from people shipped there from alll over Europe...suitcases, shoes, hair, glasses, clothing......pictures of "inmates" children who had been experimented on by Mengele...you would not believe such things existed. One poignant row of photos of local women ( mostly Jews) who on average lived just 10 to 20 days!.

After visiting the gas chamber and furnace rooms, I could not believe people taking photo's of each other sitting on for example the mechanism for fushing bodies into the crematorium ovens!

Birkenau was something wholley different. It is vast...I mean absolutely huge...I would have imagined the size was that of say Mile Oak. From the train tracks where the Jews were brought in, on the left was 100's of brick barracks for the women, on the right only abou 50 wooden huts remained, the remainder burned by the Nazi's. At the top of the camp were three gas chambers all destroyed, but you could imagine with ease what they were.

What was so sad, was picures of children going to have a "shower" and smiling thinking that their ordeal on the trains was over and they were to be settled there...little did they know that the shower was in fact a Cyclon B Gassing Chamber and they were about to die.

The literature showed, Jews, Homosexuals, intellectuals, black people, arabs, asians, gypsies, disabled people, deaf people, political prisoners....anyone who basically did not fit the arian look was killed. The only children to survive ( if you could call it that) was twins, which Mengele thought he could capture the gene that created twins so the arian race could be replicated.

When you come away from there, your whole view of life and mans inhumanity to fellow man totally changes

 

[The Large One]

Cheers, Dave.

Not pleasant reading, but ultimately necessary - we must never forget.

Without wishing to detract from what is a very heavy, very humbling experience for you (and for anyone that goes), how did you get there, how did you get accommodation in Krakow? It's just that it's a journey I wish to take myself.

 

[On the Left Wing]

Sounds absolutely awful ...

Years ago when my Dad was working in Munich (when i was about 14) I visited Daccau - it was harrowing and I remember lying awake crying that night.

Some years later I visited a museum and WWII prison in Besancon in eastern France, where similar treatment had been meted out to local resistance captors and jews. I think actually seeing the clothes (some blood stained) and personal possessions made it all seem too real

 

[Dave the OAP]

We flew BA from Gatwick direct to Krakow...£ 120 ish round trip.

We stayed at Hotel Pollera ( 3 star in K) $180 for three nights four days through HOTELPOLAND poland@hotelspoland.com

Slightly more than £30 a night.


Round of drinks for 8 people ...Local Beer ( superb) G&T's etc came to about £6...food excellent and can get a McDonalds if you so desire

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Not pleasant reading Dave. But required reading.

 

[Dave the OAP]

Sounds absolutely awful ...

Years ago when my Dad was working in Munich (when i was about 14) I visited Daccau - it was harrowing and I remember lying awake crying that night.

Some years later I visited a museum and WWII prison in Besancon in eastern France, where similar treatment had been meted out to local resistance captors and jews. I think actually seeing the clothes (some blood stained) and personal possessions made it all seem too real

What really did me was the room full of childrens clothes. Small shoes, pants, dresses, socks.All taken from the children before they were ushered into the chamber.

Did you know they invented gas chambers as the soldiers were becoming dissolutioned at having to shoot people and morale was getting low.........

 

[Biscuit]

I parent said they were thinking of going over their. I told them I don't think I could face the place. Your a brave person Dave. I'm sad enough to think if I ignore it, it'll go away.

 

[Easy 10]

Did you know they invented gas chambers as the soldiers were becoming dissolutioned at having to shoot people and morale was getting low.........

The nazi's also wanted a cheaper and more efficient method of murdering people in vast numbers.

 

[CHAPPERS]

I parent said they were thinking of going over their. I told them I don't think I could face the place. Your a brave person Dave. I'm sad enough to think if I ignore it, it'll go away.

What, you're going to ignore the holocaust?

 

[London Calling]

and can get a McDonalds if you so desire



NO, NOT PLEASANT READING

 

[El Presidente]

I'm sad enough to think if I ignore it, it'll go away.

That is a woeful excuse.

 

[The Large One]

Auschwitz/Birkenau is somewhere I would have wind myself up into going. I would not go there on a whim - but I will go.

However, I would recommend visiting Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam. I came out of there impressed rather than depressed.

 

[Gully]

The penultimate episode of the BBC documentary about Auschwitz is on tomorrow night, one of the best programmes the corporation has screened for years, I read a quote in the press yesterday that it was sufficient justification to retain the licence fee. If the Beeb continues to produce programmes that are so well researched, produced and thought provoking then I would be the last to argue that it was not money well spent.

That episode of European history is one of the most shameful acts ever committed by humanity, it is hard to believe that the perpetrators were in fact human. One of the best books I have read, although not directly about prison camps, was "if not now, when", written by Primo Levi, he ultimately took his own life, I believe because of his guilt at surviving the holocaust, his words certainly made a lasting impression on me.

 

[SULLY COULDNT SHOOT]

What really did me was the room full of childrens clothes. Small shoes, pants, dresses, socks.All taken from the children before they were ushered into the chamber.

Did you know they invented gas chambers as the soldiers were becoming dissolutioned at having to shoot people and morale was getting low.........

Auschwitz is an expereince that everyone should have... if only to basically realise how lucky we are... but Auschwitz feels empty because it's in the middle of nowhere... Majdanek concentration camp, which is a smaller version of Auschwitz with all the same 'amenities' is right on the edge of town (Lublin, 95 mins from Warsaw) and therefore all the more horrific and realistic

 

[Biscuit]

That is a woeful excuse.

I know.

I'm fine with everyone knowing about it, I agree it should never be forgotten, I just don't think I could go to the place. Just makes me feel sick

 

[Gullet]

After reading the start of this thread it makes me so angry to think of the number of people on here who defended Prince Harry when he was photographed wearing a Nazi swastika at a party recently. If anyone on here doesn't understand what the Nazis put the Jews through then watch films like Schindlers List and The Pianist. Let's remember that there are millions of relatives of those people still alive around the world and nothing should trivialise what the holocaust was about.

 

[Gully]

I lived in Belgium from 89 to 91, a country passed through by countless motorists on their way to somewhere else, but not by the Germans in WWII. On the street where I lived was an empty space where the former gestapo headquarters had stood, it was destroyed at the end of the war and despite there being a shortage of building land in the town nobody had ever tried to build on the site.

In the same street there was often a man sat on a chair outside a particular house, I reckon at the time he must have been in his early 60's. The story went that the Belgian Resistance had been meeting in the house and he, as a young lad, was posted outside as a sentry to warn those inside if the Germans approached so that they might make good their escape. Apparently he fell asleep, the Germans turned up and raided the place, all those inside were taken away, tortured and killed. Anyway, this man had decided that as punishment for his failure he would spend all his spare time, for the rest of his life, sat outside the same house in case the Germans returned. A sad and strange story but apparently a true one.

 

[Grizz]

After reading the start of this thread it makes me so angry to think of the number of people on here who defended Prince Harry when he was photographed wearing a Nazi swastika at a party recently. If anyone on here doesn't understand what the Nazis put the Jews through then watch films like Schindlers List and The Pianist. Let's remember that there are millions of relatives of those people still alive around the world and nothing should trivialise what the holocaust was about.

Though i agree with you Gully, lets not forget that it wasn't just the Nazis that meated out this inhumane treatment of the Jewish faith. The Russians are just as guilty if not more so in their abhorrent treatment, along with sections of both the British and French Government and Public who made no pains to hide their distaste for those of that faith.

One 'film' to watch to get an understanding of the final solution debate within the Nazi heirachy is Conspiracy starring Kenneth Branagh as Heydrich. An awesome if extremely chilling performance throughout.

Grizz

 

[Rowley Birkin Q.C (Deceased)]

Dave, i'm not having a go mate, but i don't think it is wholey appropriate to explain the awfulness of Auschwitz and then give us a rough guide on the best prices for dining out.
What i found quite sickening was on the B.B.C docu last week about the corruption, the section of the camp where they stripped the valuables of the people was named Canada, because the Nazi's thought Canada contained untold wealth.
Half my family are from Canada.

 

[culvers]

I visited a few years ago on a history trip with my college. It was a very sobering experience, i remember half the class were crying as we went on the tour of Auschwitz. I seem to remmeber one girl noticing the surname of her grandparents who died in Auschwitz written across a suitcase pilled high in the museum area, the vast cabinet of hair and glasses was also terriblely distrurbing.

Birkenau was horrific in a different way, i remember it being so quiet there, very haunting.

Anyone remember McIntypre invenstigates with those Chelsea hooligans who went to Auschwitz, i thiink the film showed them climbing inside the furnaces and doing Nazi saltues, their behaviour made me physically sick and i was only about 15.