Wow, where to start?! First off, the family we stayed with was so great and helpful. Thank you Adrienne for setting it up! Anne and Tim have 3 boys: 12, 10, and 5 years old who are friends with Carsten and Lucy. They work in the American Consulate in Krakow and their job allows them to travel all over the world. Emily and I had our own room and actual beds that weren't covered in plastic!! It was the best sleep of our lives. We were so excited to go to bed every night that we didn't even go to any bars or clubs haha :) We felt like grandmas...no offense Granny.
We adventured through town and saw the Wawel Castle (pronounced Vavel) where the King and Queen of Poland used to reside. We went up inside the bell tower which felt like an attic. We had to crawl through little openings and steep stair cases. We also went to an underground museum that was just opened. The town square was built ontop of a bustling midieval city which was recently discovered. We also took a bus trip to the famous salt mines where there are statues, prayer rooms, a church, chandeliers, and amazingly detailed decorations all carved out of salt. You would think that artists came down to the mines and created them, but it was actually the miners themselves. They wanted a place to pray while at work so they began by carving a statue of the cross, Jesus, Mary, and other religious figures.
That night Emily and I had a relaxing romantic dinner for two! The currency in Poland is the zloty. One pound equals about 5 zloty, so it's REALLY cheap. We had wine, salmon with cepers, steak, pierogi, and pear pancakes with carmel and vanilla sauce. HOLY MOLY it was such a treat and it was affordable.
The next day started with a large family breakfast with waffles and 5 year old Teo running around telling us the history of Poland. We went to Auschwitz which took up the whole day. On the bus there, they showed a very horrific yet informational video of footage taken during the Holocaust. It was the most sickening part of the trip for me because it was footage taken by an 18 year old boy who is still alive and was being interviewed in the present day. The man said during the entire war, the events that took place in Auschwitz and Birkenau (Birkenau is basically an extension of Auschwits that is much bigger and had 4 gas chambers, Auschwitz only had 1), were the most horrifying images he recorded. There were parts of the video that captured doctors examining dead prisoner's bodies after the liberation. Many of them babies, toddlers, and children. It was hard to watch and I had to keep looking out the window of the bus to remind myself that the sun was shining and it was a warm beautiful day outside.
Once in the camp, we saw a what a typical block of the prisoner's living quarters looked like, Block 11 where the Nazi's experimented with inexpensive ways of exicution, punishment rooms such as the Black Room (room with total darkness), and the Standing Room (tiny room where prisoners had to crawl into and stand with up to 5 people squeezed together for weeks at a time with no food, water, or toilet).
The other most difficult part to see was the entire hallway filled with shoes on both sides. Some were high-heels, shiny men's shoes, sandels, work shoes; these were such personal items that told so much about the people who were killed. Did you know that once off the train, if you were a Jew and under the age of 14 you were automatically sent to the gas chambers without even being registered in the camp? Pregnant women, young children, the elderly, and the disabled had no chance of surviving. It is heartbreaking that most of these people believed they were just being relocated to new living quarters and would be reunited with their families and belongings after their "showers". The gas chambers looked clean and inviting from the outside. They were painted white and had flowers in the windows. The buildings were surrounded by beautiful, green, blooming trees.
After realizing they were losing the war, the Nazis tried to conceal all of their crimes by burning down and destroying the gas chambers and housing blocks. There are only burnt remains of the gas chambers, but it was impossible to destroy all the blocks. To me it seemed that living arrangements, if you can even call them that, were worse in Birkenau. The wooden bunks had straw mattresses that were infested with rats, mice, bugs, lice, disease, and human feces. Each bunk slept up to 12 people. The Nazis would come into the blocks every 2 days and drag out the people who were too sick or weak to move and take them to the gas chambers in order to make room for incoming prisoners. Their "motto" was you can stay here as long as you are working. As hearbreaking and horrifying as it was, I am very thankful I had the opportunity to experience it.
On a lighter note, that night the family, Emily, and I went out to dinner and enjoyed playing with the kids and getting icecream afterwards. It was a lovely end to our trip.
