Poland: Krakow & Auschwitz

This morning I was up and met my guide in the lobby, and we were off by foot to explore Krakow! We walked around the "Green Belt" of the city, which is the area where the former city walls stood, but have been turned into a large park that surrounds the entire old city. We walked up to Wawel Royal Castle, which is perched high on the hill above the river.

Krakow has a history dating back over one thousand years. It always impresses me in these old European cities the amount of history they contain... Four times older than most of our cities, and changed hands more times than we can imagine. The castle was great, although huge portions of it were destroyed when the Austrian-Hungarian Empire took over. Thankfully due tons lot of restoration work, they have restored good portions of it; however, at least two medieval churches were completely razed, and nothing is left of them but stone foundations.

Krakow was the capital of Poland for four hundred years, until Poland and Lithuania united to form the largest country in Europe, when the capital was moved to Warsaw. The castle was impressive, but unfortunately I couldn't take pictures of the inside. Interestingly enough, Polish art and architecture is
(was?) highly influenced by the Ottoman Empire, so there is a notable Turkish flare to adornments. Two of the neatest things in the castle (in my opinion) was a ceiling that had carvings of heads on it, and several rooms that were lined with decorated leather panels. Unique, gorgeous, and not quite like anything I'd ever seen before. A definite sign you're in the "center" based on the blend of East and West...

After my tour of the castle, we walked to the cathedral which house a number of kings and heroes of Poland. After the cathedral we walked into town where I had a private tour of the University's collection of donated artifacts, which date back to instruments used by Copernicus, and to things as recent as gold medals from the 2004 Olympics (the speed walking guy donated it) and the Polish winner of the Nobel prize's medal was there as well. An interesting and eclectic mix of artifacts.

We then had lunch and drove to Auschwitz. The drive itself took almost an hour and a half. Once we arrived, I met my local guide and we set off to explore the first of three Auschwitz's compounds (I was not aware until today that there were three different areas of Auschwitz). It was a harrowing experience. I don't know how many times I teared up from pictures and artifacts and remains. I thought I was doing pretty good keeping my emotions together until we reached the children's exhibit that showed pictures of kids on their way to the gas chambers, their shoes, their clothes, pictures of starved children, pictures of the experiments (read: torture) inflected on these innocent young ones. The depths to which human cruelty and deprivation can sink is unfathomable. Although I am not Jewish, other members of my minority group were massacred here, and eventually, I wasn't able to contain my emotions any more. I saw the place where homosexuals were forced to strip naked, only to be shot in the back of the head like an animal, and it sickens me that these types of crimes still are committed, not only in distant lands, but within the borders of my own country, and it saddens me that atrocities like this still occur to this day, albeit on a less systematic and large scale.

Hate makes people do horrible things, and if anything can be learned from the atrocities of Auschwitz and other concentration camps during WWII, it is that more love, tolerance and acceptance needs to be extant in the world.

We continued on to the second Auschwitz compound, built later, but was built for the sole purpose to be a killing machine, and this is where most of the murders took place. The conditions people were transferred here were nearly as bad as the conditions they were kept in. It is just such a low point in the evolution of humans... I hope nothing like this is ever allowed to be repeated.

At any rate, after a most emotional afternoon, we drove back to Krakow and I was dropped off at my hotel. After doing a little research to find a restaurant for dinner, I set out the short distance to the place I had chosen. I don't know of it was from heightened emotions or if I had just chosen well, but I had a very good meal. After learning what someone at Auschwitz would have had for dinner, I felt a bit guilty. And emotionally drained, so I returned to the hotel. Emotionally spent, I called it an early night...