Goodbye, Poland!

My last night was celebrated with calzones and more market shopping with Marisa:

Then Kara and I went out for more adventuring while Marisa worked on homework (I probably should have joined her...):

Left: another round of hot chocolate (but an on-the-go cup so the calories don't count). Right: Cool sharpie art on plates and mugs I spotted at a store (One of those, "Hey! I could make that myself!" things that I never end up doing.)

Above: Kara bought a bottle of wine but forgot we didn't have a bottle opener...so she went in to a souvenir shop and asked the owner if she could use one of the Krakow-themed openers. He opened it for her :)

The next morning, (Sunday, November 5th), we began the journey home. It wasn't until 9ish that we made it back to Archway station. 

We were so done with public transportation at this point: I wanted one last picture...but the suitcase was in the way. So this happened:

#asgoodasitgets

Until next time! -Leah

Auschwitz

I took very few pictures of the actual camp. I wanted to take it in. I wanted to respect the millions who died. And I didn't want to glorify the atrocities that took place. But I will share what I have and simply say that visiting this place is an absolute must. "Enjoyable" is certainly not the word, but I am so glad I went:

I don't know why, but I was a little taken aback by the amount of people visiting. It felt strange to me that the entrance area (pictured below) was built up. There was a bookshop, bathrooms and food for sale. Then again, it is a museum...they do need to accommodate visitors!

Past this building you can see the barbed wire fence...beyond that is Auschwitz I.

The tour was split into two parts because there are two separate camps: Auschwitz I (pictured above) and Auschwitz II. For the first part, we each had individual headsets to hear our tour guide speaking. This was really helpful because the buildings were too cramped for him to be able to address our whole group. I think it also made the experience more emotional...his voice was playing directly into my ear. Each of us were kind of in our own little worlds, trying to process what he was saying.  

Before it was converted into a Nazi Concentration Camp, Auschwitz I was a detention center for political prisoners. It almost reminded me of a little village, much smaller than I pictured it would be. Compared to Auschwitz II, it was more intimate (if you can describe a concentration camp as that!). 

(Left: Block 24 of Auschwitz, a particularly brutal place for women.  Middle: One of many signs that were scattered around, Right: Barbed wire fence located within the camp.)

The outside of a gas chamber.

That's all for pictures of Auschwitz I. I could list in detail some of the information I learned from going inside the gas chambers, the emotions I felt when I saw the tons of human hair they had collected and learned of the other inhumane processes that took place. But truly it wouldn't do the atrocities enough justice. All I can say is that actually being inside the camp, inside the gas chamber, seeing the finger nail marks on the walls from people desperately trying to escape...there is nothing quite like it and no blog post could ever truly express the numbness I felt. 

We left Auschwitz I, got back in our coach bus, and rode to Auschwitz II. 

This camp had a completely different feel. Unlike the buildings in Auschwitz I, the buildings in the Auschwitz II camp were built by Nazis for the sole purpose of exterminating the Jews. There was no village-y feel to it. And it was three times the size of the first camp. 

Train tracks went through the camp...that's how big it was

After travelling like sardines in trains cars (above right) for several days with little food, families were separated: men "housed" to the left of these tracks (below)  and women "housed" to the right.  

The buildings they were placed in were basically stables: 

And the rows and rows of buildings truly seemed to go on forever. I wouldn't be able to capture the vastness of the place unless I took my camera up on an airplane. Here's a picture of just one:

Towards the back of the camp, a memorial with engraved words (written in many different languages) gave us one final opportunity to take in the millions of lives that were taken: 

And then we left. I heard someone point out once that Anne Frank, the most "famous" victim of the Holocaust, receives more empathy than any other holocaust victim. In other words, "What about the millions of others who died?" After this trip, I think I understand why. We as humans cannot emotionally comprehend death on such a grand scale. At least I cannot. When I walked through the Anne Frank museum earlier that week, I felt so much for the family and was moved to tears. When I left the camp, however, I had a different feeling; uneasiness and numbness. And I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. It's simply the way our minds cope. 

 The truth is, even though we may not be able to comprehend it all, it is our duty to try to. I believe we have a responsibility to read, to visit and to remember. It's the least we can do. As the saying goes:

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

So now that it has been nearly three weeks since my visit, these are my concluding thoughts. I hope I didn't overstep any boundaries or disrespect the victims with my pictures. I struggled to post this and  texted my mother, "How okay is it to talk about Auschwitz in blog?"

Her response: "How okay would it be to pretend it doesn't exist/didn't happen?" 

She's right. So here it is. 

Jewish District and Ghetto

The breakfast buffet on Friday (Nov. 4th) morning was quite uniquely un-American. 

Antipasto, cucumbers, olives....let's just say it was more savory than sweet. I ate quickly so to meet the others in the lobby at 9ish for the next tour. 

We walked to the Old Synagogue in Kazimierz (pictured above) to start a tour centered around the Jewish population in Krakow's Kazimierz and Krakow's ghetto. The next day we were going to visit Auschwitz, so this tour was a good way to ease into the topic. 

Past this gate is a famous Jewish cemetery

Our tour guide for this was also really good (it was nice out, too, so he had that going for him!) Here are two pictures I got of the Izaak Synagogue. He told us the story below:

"The founder of the synagogue is the hero of a well-known legend deriving from the Tales of 1001 Nights. Ayzik Jakubowicz, a pious but poor Jew from Krakow, dreamed that there was treasure hidden under the old bridge in Prague. Without delay, he made his way there. On arrival, it turned out the bridge was guarded by a squad of soldiers and that digging was out of the question. Ayzik told the officer about his dream, promising him half of the booty. The officer retorted, "Only fools like Polish Jews can possibly believe in dreams. For several nights now I have been dreaming that in the Jewish town of Kazimierz there is hidden treasure in the oven of the home of the poor Jew Ayzik Jakubowicz. Do you think I am so stupid as to go all the way to Cracow and look for the house of this Isaac the son of Jacob?". Ayzik returned home immediately, took the oven apart, found the treasure and became rich. After this it was said: 'There are some things which you can look for the world over, only to find them in your own home. Before you realise this, however, you very often have to go on along journey and search far and wide.'"

(You can see the back of me with the "Brown" hat in the group photo, left)

After walking through more of the Jewish district, we arrived at Plac Nowy Flea Market (it's been around for 200-something years!) The main circular building in the center had walk-up-windows with lots of different vendors selling their variations of zapiekanka, a traditional Polish "pizza" (basically its an open sandwich, with cheese and toppings melted on half of a baguette). Our tour guide called it "communist pizza" (I have honestly no idea why) and told us we had to try some. 

 Marisa before trying it (right): "I don't know about this. He called it communist pizza..."

The second half of our tour was sobering; we visited a Jewish ghetto. I've read a fair amount about the topic, so most of what the tour guide said I had known already. But it is a completely different experience to put an image to that knowledge!

The movie Schindler's List (more on this later), was set here because much of the architecture has remained unchanged since the 1940's. The photograph below shows the stairway used in the in the scene in which Mrs. Dresner hides from the Jewish police who were helping the Germans to round up the Jews for "transportation to the East", a euphemism for taking them to the gas chambers:

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Poland/Kazimierz/Kazimierz01.html 

And here as it is today:

Everything looks the same structurally, but there is now a cafe and some other shops in the buildings. I like that even though people have "moved on" in a sense by continuing about their daily life there, the businesses still pay tribute to the tragedies that took place here (below):

After the Jews were thrown out of their homes here, they were forced over Vistula river to an isolated ghetto:

We walked across this bridge too. It's a strange feeling...the view out on the river was beautiful, but I kept thinking about how I was walking on a path that so many people had walked years ago with much different emotions!

Across to the other side:

Krakow Ghetto & Deportation Monument (below):

From an artist's perspective, it's a really cool monument. Our tour guide skimmed over it somewhat so I researched it and this is what I found: "It includes 33 steel and cast iron chairs in the square and 37 smaller chairs standing on the edge of the square and at tram stops. The memorial's chairs are part of the bus and tram stops and are used by locals awaiting transportation, suggesting that anyone can be a victim." One thing the tour guide did say is that there is symbolism behind which way the chairs are facing. 

Before the tour guide dropped us off at the Schindler's Factory museum, he pointed out one more thing that sent tingles down my spine:

This is a portion of the ghetto wall that the Nazi's built in between buildings to slowly close the Jews in. The shape of the wall is particularly creepy because it looks like a long line of tombstones (Yes, it was deliberate).   A lot of Jews were convinced to move to the ghetto because they thought it would be a safe place...soon, though, these walls started to go up, and there was no escaping to the other side of the river. He told us several accounts of people who wrote about the gnawing feeling they had when they saw the tombstone structures. I can't even imagine what that fear must've been like. I think I would rather be killed on the spot than live in fear for months and months like they did. 

We went through the museum next, and learned about how Schindler saved hundreds of Jews by employing them in his factory to make bullets for the war effort...I was really looking forward to seeing this and was actually a little disappointed. The museum itself was great, but another tour guide led us around. He kept rushing us through and seemed annoyed that we were "ignorant Americans" (I think the language barrier made it difficult for us to get his jokes...and thus made us seem uninterested). Nevertheless, I ended up lagging behind so I could read the captions of the photos he kept skipping over. The museum was the only so-so experience of an overall amazingly-planned trip. 

Back in the center of the city, Kara, Marisa and I wandered around window-shopping and trying to decide where to eat. We looked into a wax-figure museum, and in the lobby we saw a Hillary Clinton and a Donald Trump "debating" on a stage. (Boy, has it been interesting to watch the election through an international lens!)

Kara and I were momentarily distracted when we witnessed a man propose to his girlfriend in the city square. We spent at least six full minutes watching them, and then walked away and walked back to watch them again. (Marisa made fun of us for being so excited about it, but it was SO dreamy!) This led to a dinner table conversation that pretty much revolved around engagements, weddings, and dreams in general. (Sigh.) I learned so much about both Marisa and Kara that evening: things I didn't know even though we see each other every day at home.

(Funky heating lamp for the outdoor table made my pictures all distorted)

We finished off the night at this chocolate shop near our hotel. I ordered hot chocolate, but it was more like eating thick chocolate soup. So rich we could barely finish!

And cheap too...the currency rate worked strongly in our favor. It was the equivalent of 1.5 pound. 

And that was Day 2 of Krakow!

(I'm sorry I talk about food so much...everything just tastes. so. good. I truly can't help myself!)