Just Landed in London: June 2014

If you read my Amsterdam post, you know that I'm interested in learning about the history of Holocaust. It is the most inhumane, depressing and disgusting acts by psychotic insane mind. I had been wanting to go to a Nazi concentration museum for quite some time. I thought I could go to Dachau when I went to Munich. Originally Munich was one of the cities that I would visit with my sister when she comes end of June. after doing some research, I decided to go to Auschwitz. There were other places that I could visit while in the area. Krakow seemed to be an interesting city to go to, and I wasn't wrong. I booked my trip in February, I think, then I mentioned it to Amelia, whom I just met from church at the time. I didn't know her well at the time, but she seemed to be nice, matured and turned out that we had the same interest.

We left London on Saturday. We actually were on different flights. She flew from Heathrow and I flew from Stansted. She decided to take an afternoon flight on Tuesday back to London. I had an early morning flight. Anyway, it worked out well since we landed in Krakow about the same time. we got picked up by Greg, Air BnB host. After going through custom, I walked out of the exit door and started looking for him. He was supposed to be there holding a piece of paper with our names on it. I was kind of nervous when I didn't see him. I still didn't see him after taking some cash out of the ATM. The good thing when I called him, he picked up right away. It turned out that he was heading to Terminal 2 and I was in Terminal 1. Long story short, he found me and we headed back to Terminal 2 to pick up Amelia. She was by the main door when I walked in. Greg took us to the apartment right away. It was around 10 miles away from the airport.

Before the trip, I liked to research everything, including best cheap eats. One find that came up was a pierogy place that was on the the same street as the apartment. I told Amelia that we should go there for lunch before heading out to sight see. She was game. The decoration was inspired by Van Gogh. It was a cute little cafe just next door.

We split two dishes, chicken and spinach and plum filled pierogies. The chicken and spinach was the best. I noticed that even though there weren't any exotic spice in their food. The Polish seasoned their food really well. You tasted garlic, pepper and salt. You don't find this in British food that is so bland. we also had two bottled water and coffee. The total was $8 per person. It was cheap.

We stayed in Kazimierz, which was the Jewish quarter. A historical district that was just outside of the old town. It was a 10 minute walk to Wawel Hill, which first became a political power center at the end of the first millennium AD and in the 9th century. In this area, we found Wawel Cathedral, Palace and Tower.

Wawel Tower. You can go to the top by climbing the stairs.

Vistula River, which is south of the hill.

I read before that many places in Wawel were free to enter, you only need a ticket if you want to go to a museum or see their collections. We decided to buy tickets for the State Rooms and a collection of one da Vinci's painting. Lady with an Ermine is a painting by Leonardo da Vinci from around 1490. The painting was moved to Wawel Castle temporary because the art museum was under a renovation.

Corridor in the Palace

Palace court yard

John Paul II

The former Pope was born outside of Krakow. He took up his appointment as Bishop of Krakow when he was 38. Since he did a lot of work in the area, you can see his name, statue and portrait all over Krakow. The weather in Krakow could turn around quick. It was sunny and hot and the next hour it was pouring rain. We got soaked a bit. After hiding in a shelter from the rain with a bunch of 10 year old boys, we walked to the main square.

Traditional Polka songs

Town Hall Tower

St. Mary's Basilica

The exterior of Cloth Hall or Sukiennice

During its golden age in the 15th century, the hall was the source of a variety of exotic imports from the east – spices, silk, leather and wax – while Kraków itself exported textiles, lead, and salt from the Wieliczka Salt Mine.

Cloth Hall

Not much to do in the market square besides open market, shops and restaurants. We went to pick up the bus tickets to Zakopane from a tour company that was not to far from the main square.

The next day is something that I've been looking forward to for a long time. We went on tour to Auschwitz in the morning and then Salt Mine in the afternoon. I picked a small tour company, like usual. We got picked up around 8.30AM. I don't think I can say much about Auschwitz. It's impossible for me to understand why the Nazis treated other human beings like garbage. We watched a video of the Nazi liberation on the way there. The film was taken by a Soviet soldier who heard about the camp but didn't know much about it. We started the tour in Auschwitz II–Birkenau, this is a combination of concentration and extermination camp. The Nazis built the second camp because they ran out of space in Auschwitz I. I copied and pasted the next few paragraphs from Wikipedia. It provided a good explanation if you're not familiar with the history of it.

Auschwitz I was first constructed to hold Polish political prisoners, who began to arrive in May 1940. The first extermination of prisoners took place in September 1941, and Auschwitz II–Birkenau went on to become a major site of the Nazi "Final Solution to the Jewish question". From early 1942 until late 1944, transport trains delivered Jews to the camp's gas chambers from all over German-occupied Europe, where they were killed with the pesticide Zyklon B. At least 1.1 million prisoners died at Auschwitz, around 90 percent of them Jewish; approximately 1 in 6 Jews killed in the Holocaust died at the camp. Others deported to Auschwitz included 150,000 Poles, 23,000 Romani and Sinti, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, 400 Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, and tens of thousands of people of diverse nationalities. Living conditions were brutal, and many of those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced labor, infectious diseases, individual executions, and medical experiments.

In the course of the war, the camp was staffed by 6,500 to 7,000 members of the German Schutzstaffel (SS), approximately 15 percent of whom were later convicted of war crimes. Some, including camp commandant Rudolf Höss, were executed. The Allied Powers refused to believe early reports of the atrocities at the camp, and their failure to bomb the camp or its railways remains controversial. One hundred and forty-four prisoners are known to have escaped from Auschwitz successfully, and on October 7, 1944, two Sonderkommando units—prisoners assigned to staff the gas chambers—launched a brief, unsuccessful uprising.

As Soviet troops approached Auschwitz in January 1945, most of its population was evacuated and sent on a death march. The prisoners remaining at the camp were liberated on January 27, 1945, a day now commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the following decades, survivors such as Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, and Elie Wiesel wrote memoirs of their experiences in Auschwitz, and the camp became a dominant symbol of the Holocaust. In 1947, Poland founded a museum on the site of Auschwitz I and II, and in 1979, it was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The map for Auschwitz 2

Electric fence. Some prisoners threw themselves to the fence when life became unbearable.

The gate in which the train entered the camp

A lot of history on this rail

I'm not sure this is the original watch tower or not.

The brick buildings in the back ground are the men barracks.

The original train that carried Jews to the camps. They could stand only. No window. Imagine the heat in the summer and the cold in the winter. Many didn't survive.

The guard shack

This is a photo of the prisoners that were separated. The women and children were immediately sent to the left, they ended up in the gas chamber.

The guy who was standing in the middle called the Death Angel. He was the one who decided where you went to the concentration camp or gas chamber based on your health.

The Nazi blew up the gas chamber when they lost the war. This memorial was built by the gas chamber.

Ruins from the gas chambers.

Women's camp

The only heater in the building

Toilets

Men's camp.

Work will set you free

Gate to Auchwitz I

Cyclone B. This is the chemical used in the gas chambers.

This is the door when prisoners were brought out to the death wall below.

Reconstruction. The original wall was destroyed.

"The Hospital" used for various medical experiments on the prisoners.

This is where one of the Nazi Generals was hung after they lost the war.

Gas chamber in Auschwitz I

Crematorium

I forgot to mention that we went to Oskar Schindler factory that was made to a museum the day before. It was very interesting and loads of information on the history of Jews in Poland.

Oskar's type writer

Original desk

Enamelware and metal products from the factory

After Auschwitz, we had a nice lunch at a local restaurant that served Polish food, in front of the Salt Mine. Polish food was very tasty and well seasoned. Their borsch is only broth, not thick at all. I had a croquette on the side.

We were off to Wieliczka Salt Mine. It's a guided tour. It started with walking down 378 wooden steps, 60+ meters below the ground.

Looking down

Looking up

The first ground floor

Some old techniques used in the mining

Made from salt. Before being processed, salt was hard as rocks.

One of the doors to a chamber

Princess Kinga

There is a legend about Princess Kinga, associated with the Wieliczka mine. The Hungarian noblewoman was about to be married to Bolesław V the Chaste, the Prince of Kraków. As part of her dowry, she asked her father for a lump of salt, since salt was prizeworthy in Poland. Her father King Béla took her to a salt mine in Máramaros. She threw her engagement ring from Bolesław in one of the shafts before leaving for Poland. On arriving in Kraków, she asked the miners to dig a deep pit until they come upon a rock. The people found a lump of salt in there and when they split it in two, discovered the princess's ring. Kinga had thus become the patron saint of salt miners in and around the Polish capital