Dave the OAP
Well-known member
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
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