krakow is quite beautiful and i'd recommend a trip there to anyone. and a special surprise (for me, anyway) was how similar polish is to czech. shockingly, my horrendous czech vocabulary and incomprehensible pronunciation went a long way there. prosim? yes. prosim, bitches.
the weird part, though, is that it also felt a bit like i'd never left prague. in essence, krakow is the same place i've been living in for 6 months. allow me to demonstrate:
let's start with the centerpiece.
awww... look at that! krakow how a charming old town square with a statue of an obscure polish politician/activist/monarch that i couldn't identify for you. and it's dotted with little restaurants serving perogies and cheap beer.
wait... what's this?! an old town square with a statue representing an obscure political situation, surrounded by pubs and restaurants serving typical czech fare... gulas and whatnot! amazing!
onto the second landmark...
wow, that's so unique. a church with two steeples right in old town! how beautiful! how quaint! makes me feel like i'm in an eastern european time warp.
hmmm.... that's weird. a church with two steeples. where have i seen that before?
number three...
hi clock tower.
oh snap. clock tower.
and of course...
large medieval castle with church perched on a hill!
wait a minute...
what krakow did have that sets it apart from everywhere else i've been, however, is something very sad and about which i will not make poorly-timed, inappropriate jokes. i'm actually not a crier, but i choked up a few times on this part of the trip... my day trip to auschwitz.
there are many reasons why i'm not posting much about this. i suppose i realize that i don't even possess the vocabulary or verbal prowess to do it justice. and i don't have many photographs as, out of respect for those who suffered, we were asked not to take pictures in most of the exhibits. but i would like to share a few things that i saw.
first, the camp itself is divided into three sections... auschwitz i, birkinau, and monowitz. monowitz was completely destroyed as the soviet army came marching through during the liberation. the most dreadful parts of birkinau were also destroyed, along with the "canada" barracks -- where they kept everyone's possessions. and auschwitz i is still standing and relatively well-preserved. they've put exhibits in most of the barracks, and of course, the grounds are disarmingly well-maintained.
we began with this building here. i can honestly say i was expecting them to start us a little slow, but felt blindsided when we stood under a vent when we got inside and were told that that's where they dropped in the gas. 200 people at a time fit in there. shock value inexplicable. actually, this was one of the few chambers and crematoria left. the others had been destroyed, and were considerably bigger.
the vast majority of the exhibits were photographs. we saw maps of the prisoners, mug shots, models of the camp, photographs of the malnutrition that people had suffered taken after the liberation, heart-breaking stories about children, families, and women. they also had several photographs of the bastards that did all this. for me, the most startling was a picture taken while they were doing the "selection" process. only about 25% were chosen as fit to work, and the rest were sent immediately to the gas chamber. most of the chosen ones were young men, and the women and children who were spared were subjected to cruel, painful sterilization and developmental experiments. in one of the photographs, there is a small line of elderly people with canes arriving at the camp. you can clearly see the man who was doing the selection process... and with each person, he would point towards the barracks or give a thumbs-up direction to the crematoria. you can't see his hand very clearly because of the quality of the photograph, but if you look below him, you can see that he's casting a shadow. and the shadow shows quite clearly where he's pointing. haunting. side note... he was recognized by his son years later upon visiting the exhibit. his son had known that he had been part of the war, but not that part. hard to imagine how shocking that was.
among the other things we saw were horrible electric fences, rooms for punishment (as if it could get worse) and the walls in front of which they conducted executions. terrible, horrifying, frightening -- all of it.
they also had on display many of the possessions they'd managed to preserve after the liberation. too many things to talk about, the most devastating for me was the case of suitcases. hundreds, if not thousands, of suitcases. and of course, people had written their names on them and where they lived. it's hard to explain, really, what seeing something so personal does to you. you remember that they'd packed up the most important things to them in this world and lovingly labeled their cases because they really believed, deep down, that they would get them back again.
the second part of this whole thing was of course, birkinau. it's 30x the size of auschwitz i, and has been mostly destroyed. but you can see, clearly, that is stretches as far as the eye can see. and it's just like the movies.
only worse.
everyone should see it before they die.
and never, ever forget it.
