Landed in Warsaw on Thursday 6/28. When we got to our hotel (Sofitel Victoria) this was going on in the Pilsudski Square across the street
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| Pilsudski Square with cops and soldiers parading |
In addition, there were about 15 antique Rolls Royce's on exhibit in front of the hotel.
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| A beautiful 1911 Rolls belonging to a really nice guy from Michigan. |
Out for a stroll on the Krakowskie Przedmiescie, I ran into this poster.
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| Hoover did a lot for the Poles from 1918 until the Nazi invasion |
For more, see:
http://www.ushistory.org/more/hoover.htm . Hoover gets a bad rep in the US for having the misfortune to preside over the stock market crash of '29 and the start of the great depression, but he did a lot of good things.
The next morning, we toured both Pawiak, an SS prison where Polish political prisoners were tortured and executed, and then the mother of all Jewish museums, Polin, the history of the Jews in Poland. Polish anti-semitism didn't start and end with the Nazis, there were strains running through the middle ages with Pogroms throughout the 1800's and early 20th century. As late as 1968, officials in the Soviet-controlled Polish government were able to whip up anti-semitism, resulting in the emigration of 3000 Polish Jews to Israel. The museum is built on the site of the Warsaw ghetto. It's an amazing exhibition that traces Jewish life in Poland from the first century up to contemporary times, including extensive coverage of the Warsaw ghetto, the uprising, deportation and the mass murder of most of Poland's 3,000,000 Jews by the Nazis.
Krakow (7/1-7/4)
We stayed in a lovely apartment in the Jewish quarter (Kazamierz district) which is in the Rubenstein building, named after Helene Rubenstein, a Krakow girl who made good by starting a cosmetics business. There are 7 old synagogues in Krakow, three of them are active. Our guide claims that there were about 1,000 Jews who remaimed in Krakow after the war (there were about 50,000 who were murdered by the Nazis), and now some are returning, so there are now 3,000.
There seems to be some corroboration of this on the web... even though antisemitism is on the rise. See:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-krakow-jews-celebrate-their-communitys-revival-amid-rising-xenophobia/
The first thing we did was to visit Rynek Główny, the large town square in the old part of Krakow.
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| St. Mary's Basilica |
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| Horse carriage tours around the square |
On 7/2 we took one of the golf-cart tours around Krakow, which included Schindler's factory. This is a museum that occupies the site of Arthur Schindler's factory that was the basis of Spielberg's movie, Schindler's List.
On Tuesday, 7/2, we toured
Auschwitz/Birkenau, the site of the murder of over 1 million people. Mostly Jews, but also Gypsies, homosexuals, Polish political prisoners, and Russian POW's.
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| Luggage from the Jewish victims |
Among the chilling exhibits in the Auschwitz museum were the mounds of human hair that the Nazis used to make cloth after they cut off their prisoners' hair after "selection" . The Auschwitz camp was where Zyclon-B (cyanide gas) was first used for mass murder. The original gas chamber is still intact. The Nazi's inflicted collective punishment on any work group from the camp where a prisoner attempted to escape, or where the work output was insufficient. Preserved in the camp's museum were various cells which the Nazis used for punishment including starvation cells and suffocation cells, where prisoners were sent for slow death.
In addition there was a courtyard where prisoners were punished by hanging from hooks by their hands which were tied behind their backs, and also executed by hanging or firing squad. These punishments were typically carried out in front of large numbers of other prisoners as a form of terror.
Birkenau was the Nazi's scaled up version of Auschwitz, about 2 km away from the Auschwitz gate. It had 4 gas chambers / crematoria and covers a tremendous area. Conditions were even harsher. For the 10% who were selected for work (not immediately sent to the gas chambers on arrival), the life expectancy was less than 3 months, and death was either from exhaustion, exposure, disease (from overcrowding and a lack of sanitation), starvation, or execution, which occurred when work output was insufficient in the eyes of the SS.
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| Ruins of 1 of the 4 crematoria at Birkenau |
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| The scale of the Birkenau death camp is beyond description |
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| Original boxcar used to transport victims to Auschwitz. 80 to 90 victims. Many died from hypothermia or dehydration en route. The journey often took several days. |
Birkenau was largely destroyed by the Nazis in an attempt to obliterate evidence in the face of the rapid advance of the Red Army in the winter of 1945. The Nazis then led 60,000 on a 63km death march to another camp during which 15,000 died en route.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_marches_(Holocaust)#Auschwitz_to_Loslau
Logistics note: We booked a tour from Krakow. The total time was about 6 hours, which includes about 3 hours of total transit time. That left 3 hours to visit the sites. The pace was way too fast, and allowed no time for reflection, or to even read the information in the exhibits. Auschwitz receives about 2M visitors / year, and is very busy in the tourist season. The museum has limited hours for individual visitors, so we booked a tour.
Anyone considering a visit to Auschwitz might want to consider doing it in the off-season (after Sept. and before May) and either going on your own (you can get a bus or train to Oswiecim from Krakow... the journey takes about 1:20), or hiring a private guide. Allow at least 4 to 5 hours at the site. Birkenau is massive and open. There is a lot of walking, even just to get to the back of the camp where the gas chambers and memorial are.
