Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camps

I only had 2 nights in Krakow, so had to get cracking with sightseeing. Although I don’t usually opt for organised tours, I did book in for one to Auschwitz to save from stuffing around with how to get out there & back. The tour was advertised as going for 6 hours including 3 ½ hours at the camps. While not a lot of time to see & take in everything, I thought it would be enough. However, we left at 3pm & the drive out there took 1 ¼ hours, & we ended up only getting 1 ¾ hours at Auschwitz & ½ hour at Birkenau. The guide there was great though. While we only got to see about a third of all the Museum, she revealed a lot about the history & was extremely respectful in doing so.
The feeling of being in a place where 1.1 million people were murdered was quite intimidating. I could myself going into self-protect mode to block out some of the negativity of the place. But, of course, I still got overwhelmed by the monstrosities committed there - the calculated & systemic annihilation of all these people as part of a bigger plan for complete genocide. How people were treated not as people but as insects to be exterminated. Their personal items collected & valuables separated for recycling. Even human hair was used to make cloth. People placed overnight in standing pens, four at a time, so they couldn’t sit down, then forced to work through the next day. Children sentenced to crimes against the state & executed - all innocent.

Once a survivor from Birkenau on reviewing photos taken of the site had said "there was no grass here, if there had been some, we would have eaten it".
I am convinced that every person needs to visit one of these places to understand what intolerance can ultimately lead to. The seed of intolerance that has the potential to lead to hatred lies within each of us. But we just don’t learn from the past - or maybe some of us just don’t want to. A sign on one of the doors, a quote by George Santana, reads "the one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again".

August 1st - Warsaw Uprising Anniversary

Well, I had chosen the most special (& busy) day of the year to visit the Warsaw Uprising Museum - the Uprising anniversary. The museum was packed with Polish people & it was a challenge to get to see any of the exhibits.
One which sticks in my mind was video footage of the Jewish people of the ghetto that had to collect dead bodies from their neighbourhood, through the emaciated bodies on a cart, then transport them to a mass grave where they then had to shuttle the bodies down a ramp. Instant tears - imagine how it would feel to do that work? There were also a couple of Rabbis looking on at the mass grave - I cannot imagine how much distress they must have been going through.

Horrors of Nazi Germany

My last full day in Berlin was left to explore the atrocities of Nazi Germany. The ‘Topography of Terror’ is an open air museum based at the site of the old Gestapo/SS headquarters, now demolished. The new museum is still being built & in the meantime, they’ve established a pictographically history along a path on the site. Museum entry was free to all visitors.
I was moved to tears - a powerful introduction to the monstrous crimes perpetrated by the Nazis. And while wandering along & reading all about the history, I couldn’t help but think about the news story I saw only a few nights beforehand about the rise of the far right extremists in Hungary trying to clamp down on the Roma (gypsies) who they blamed for the crime sweeping the country. It all sounded far too familiar. How in trying times we continue to blame the ‘other’ for all of our problems. We still haven’t learned from history.
Then on to the Jewish Museum, which was an incredible architectural building. I had always wondered why the Jewish people had been the target for so much hatred throughout history. It was while I wandered through the Jewish museum that I finally understood why. How myths & lies and the fear of difference had built a severe intolerance to these people. And it was here that I also finally understood why the Jewish people needed to have their own homeland after being denied assimilation again & again in so many countries - never permitted to completely fit in anywhere.