easter eastern europe - Krakow

The visit to Auschwitz was the highlight of my Easter escapade. I have always been deeply interested in WW2 and especially the Holocaust: I always wonder how perfectly nice young men could perform such atrocities to their fellow neighbours and men. I have read/researched extensively on this subject since young, and I have always wanted to visit the concentration camp sites. So since I was already in Berlin, I just had to go to Auschwitz, the largest concentration and extermination camp site of the Nazi regime.

6 couchette polish cabin: brought back memories of Mongolia

I arrived at Auschwitz on a gloomy Saturday afternoon. I think the dreariness of the weather just made the entire atmosphere even more melancholic and sad. As I stepped through the gates of Auschwitz 1, I felt the shackles of the past weighing me down. It is impossible to tour the camp without feeling a sense of emptiness: This was the very place where Jews, Poles, Gypsies, political opponents of the Nazis were interned, incarcerated and tortured in the not so distant past.

main gate of Auschwitz 1 with the famous "Arbeit Macht Frei" inscription

double electrified prison wires

Auschwitz-Birkenau was even worse than Auschwitz 1. The Germans certainly did not hide their intentions by calling it an extermination camp instead of a concentration camp! The wretchedness and despair of the place just gets you when you see the infamous railway line leading to the main gate looming on the horizon. You wonder what the prisoners must have felt as they were cattle-loaded onto the trains and carted off in the darkness of the night, to arrive at an unfamiliar place only to be immediately sorted and separated from friends and family, then depending on their group, sent off either for labour, or simply to die by gassing. Remnants of the hastily destroyed (by the Germans) gas chambers and incinerators were still very much visible, along with numerous mass graves conveniently just sited beside them. Yes, Auschwitz-Birkenau is one very huge cemetery.

For those sent off to labour, a worse fate awaited them. Many were forced to work in the most difficult conditions with little or even no food. Needless to say, many died of disease and starvation, which was the goal of Hitler's Final Solution anyway.

Although the snow had already melted, it was still very much winter with the wind and cold. Looking back, I think it just added to the amazement how some people could survive the entire Holocaust in the camps. I mean, I was already freezing in my North Face jacket while touring the camp grounds; How could people actually make it though the entire winter with so little food and clothing? Sometimes, you really have to admire the indomitableness of the human spirit. As Steinlauf, one of the prison inmates said,

"[that] precisely because the camp was a great machine to reduce us to beasts, we must not become beasts; that even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that, if we want to survive, then it's important that we strive to preserve at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the external shape of civilization".

railway line leading to Auschwitz-Birkenau

view from the watchtower

mass graves

rubble of the destroyed incinerators

memorial to those who died at Auschwitz

melancholic weather

After Auschwitz we met up with Bern and Lucien who had also come to Krakow for the Easter holidays. Actually they bumped into Jianhui at the airport by coincidence and its just amazing how we are all studying in France, but it took us almost 6 months and a trip to Poland to meet up!

dinner and drinks @ la scandale

Similar to day 2 in Berlin, I walked and walked and walked around Krakow on Easter Sunday. Most of the shops were closed anyway, and we just did a lot of sightseeing of the city. The sun had finally come out so it was pretty nice to be walking outdoors. =)

rynek glowny, the main square

kazimierz, the Jewish quartier

by the banks of the vistula river

Schindler's factory

Wawel castle

We ended out city sightseeing tour back at Rynek Glowny, where I had my dunch/linner of, well you guessed it: Pork trotters! Wow it was 100% fat and a lot more sinful than pork knuckles! It was too good to be missed but unfortunately I was unable to finish the entire portion because it was sooo rich! But it was definitely good. How the Poles don't frequently die of heart attacks is certainly a mystery! =P

polish BBQ!

my HUGE trotter!

After dinner it was a night of extreme tastes: First up was a string ensemble Easter concert. It was not too bad, and the lineup included a couple of traditional crowd favourites like Bach's Air in D major and Mozart's Allegro. However, after a long day of walking about and a couple of beers throughout the day, they sounded more like lullabies rather than musical movements to me. =P

Then we went clubbing at ProZac, quite a famous club in Krakow. Unfortunately there was no DJ for that night and we had just to be content with Top 40 hits. The night before I walked by and they were still playing trance mixes! Bleah.. Pure bad luck! Nonetheless, we still enjoyed ourselves and it was still quite a great way to end my Easter escapade. =P

talented musicians

[L-R] me, Trina, Bern, Lucien, Jianhui

As usual, more photos can be found at my facebook album here. =)