Poland
Poland |
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There is a lot to see and do in Poland, but the only half-way decent pictures I have are from a trip mostly to Kraków.
The images are thumbnails, 25% of the original scan size. Click on them for a larger version, 50% of the original. Send me an e-mail if you want a copy of the original.
Nazi Germany established a large number of concentration camps, extermination camps, and slave-labor facilities throughout Europe, including in Poland. Some of the many such facilities established in Poland alone were the Kraków-Płaszow concentration camp and several nearby armaments factories and a stone quarry, all of them utilizing slave labor.
The stone quarry is still there, it's a short walk from central Kraków. The story of "Schindler's List" involved this quarry, and the relevant scenes in the movie were shot here. From the quarry rim you have a nice view over Kraków, and you can even see the factory which belonged to Oskar Schindler.
The town of Oświęcim is about 50 km west of Kraków. The Germans were unable to pronounce the Slavic name and renamed it "Auschwitz". The nearby town of Brzezinka was similarly renamed "Birkenau".
The Germans went on to build Konzentrationslager Auschwitz, the largest of the Nazi concentration camps. It was a complex of three main camps:
The fence at Auschwitz I. The Germans based Auschwitz I on an existing Polish army camp, re-using the brick barracks.
The Germans imprisoned up to 20,000 people here at a time.
A group of people going to the museum in Auschswitz I.
The Germans seized all the possessions of arriving prisoners, most of whom had been led to believe that they were merely being "relocated" and so they should bring their most valuable possessions with them.
The Germans made some attempt to hide what they had been doing when the Soviet Army approached Auschwitz toward the end of the war. However, the Soviets found large collections of personal possessions collected just within the past few days — eyeglasses, silverwear, jewelry, umbrellas, etc. Plus, of course, the gold the Germans harvested from teeth, and the piles of hair shaved from the arriving women. One display case in the museum is over 30 meters long and is completely filled with human hair.
Just more Nazi German illogic — they were convinced that everyone else was sub-human, but they were still willing to use pillows and mattresses stuffed with the hair of "non-Aryans".
Inside one of the few remaining wooden barracks at Birkenau (Auschwitz II). At least 1,100,000 people were killed just at Birkenau.
The Germans killed most by gassing them, typically as soon as possible on arrival. But many more were killed through systematic starvation, intentional lack of disease prevention, and so-called "medical" experiments. Remember, Josef Mengele was the camp "physician".
Ruins of the gas chambers and crematoriums. More than 20,000 people could be gassed and cremated every day.
SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss, camp commandant 1940-1943, estimated that they killed 2.5-3 million. Adolf Eichmann estimated 2,000,000. But despite (or maybe because of) the German efficiency in killing and cremating their victims, no complete list survives and there is a range of estimates.
The current estimate is "at least 1,100,000". The morons who deny the Holocaust use the uncertainty over just how many people the Germans slaughtered as their "evidence" that maybe they didn't kill anyone.
Höss was hanged in 1947 near the crematoriums.
At the memorial.
At least the last time I was there, there was a hostel inside a convent. The only drawback is that they close the gate at 2300, and once it's closed, the place is a fortress. Don't be late getting back!
Here you can see the exterior of the convent from across the road.
The courtyard of the convent.
Wiliczka is another day-trip you can do out of Kraków. There is a large salt mine there, it has operated since the Middle Ages.
The miners carved statues all through the tunnels, and there is even a church underground, made entirely of salt.
I don't have any pictures from the mine — have you ever tried taking pictures in a salt mine?
For some pictures and lots of details see:
— http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wieliczka_Salt_Mine
— http://www.kopalnia.pl/home.php?action=&id_language=2
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