17/08/2011 Day 8. Kutna Hora - Auschwitz - Krakow

Got up at 5.30 this morning, it was still dark! Bright and early. Set off for Poland at 6 sharpish. Aaron and Nick did the drive. A good 6 and a half hours drive over the border got us to Auschwitz. Initially it was hard to grasp the scale of the place. The pictures don't really do it "justice". There were fields full of double sets of chimneys, the only remnants of the barrack like wooden buildings the prisoners were kept in. The nazis tried to destroy the place when they were due to lose the war and hide the evidence. A few buildings were preserved and few others have been renovated to restore them for us to see. Entering the main gate we could see the train track that the prisoners would have been brought in on. The train would have gone to end of the tracks to allow all of it's carriages to empty within the compound. The track in the compound must have been over 1km long, epic scale. We had a look in some of the buildings and inside were three tier bunks made from wood, the Walls and roof of wood with just stone chimneys used for heating, if they were ever given fuel to burn for heating. They only had a sheet to sleep under, apparantly the winters in Auschwitz could get as low as -20 degrees C. The area on Poland that the nazis called Auschwitz is called oswiechim, said os-fyen-cheem. We walked around tryin to take it in and we came across the ruins of one of the gas chamber/crematorium combinations. We read that as many as 2000 were invited into the chamber at one time and pellets were dropped in through the roof and the gas called Zyklon B came from the pellets and killed all in 15-20 minutes. They were already naked in the thought of gettin showered so the SS then removed all body hair and gold teeth etc and went on to burn the dead. There was a separate furnace used to burn the documents of the murdered Jews and "political prisoners". Later we read of an area which had a trench dug to the side of a trail used to hamper escaping prisoners when the diggers revolted against the guards and 7 escaped, 20 though were shot and 300 sent to the gas chambers as a threat to would be escapists. We also saw the area where they had made temporary gas chambers and where the dead were burned in open air and thier ashes used as fertiliser in the surrounding land. These temporary chambers were used as the population of the camp ballooned to almost 100,000. I was hit hard when I read about Hungarian, Czech and other nationality Jews were tempted to this camp by being sold non-existent land plots, shops and houses. After a couple of hours walking this camp in 28 degree baking sunshine we headed to the camper again to find the campsite. I was driving this one. Only a short 1 hour drive away was the site and we set up camp quickly and enjoyed the rest of the evening drinking some beer in the sunshine. We even did some handwashing of clothes!! Yes... Boys...washing....by hand! Up tomorrow for an 8.45 meeting to board a bus and have a guided tour of a local salt mine. Good night all!