Better view from the train this morning than it was from the sleeper. But a different train trip today. Went to Oswiecim. German name Auschwitz. Train ride is about 2 hrs from Krakow. The country is definitely more unkempt than Czech and much older and drabber infrastructure. Won't even begin to compare with Germany. When I arrived in Szczecin from Hoffbahn in Berlin I expected something a little flash. Instead the station was more like Narrandera main station in the 80s, than a major European border crossing and connection point. Even the main station in Krakow is only now getting an update. Mind you, this innaction is probably what saved the Old Town. Much less English spoken here too, though a great winningness from most people to try and interpret sign language. Unlike German and Latin languages you can't pick up a word here and there to help the conversation along. I usually just add 'en' to each word and hope for the best, "speaken de Englishen?" - (change the 'en' to an 'a' for southern Europe). Like Japan, Turkey and the rest of Eastern Europe there are many many classes of schoolchildren out and about with their brave teachers. I don't know why we don't take school kids more places more often. We just spout crap about "authentic learning".
Got the bus back from Auschwitz, it was a long trip but took us through the more well tended sides of towns and houses. What a claim to fame Auschwitz has to live with, there are thousands of tourists everyday but no real souvenir trade. Not even ex-Africans selling Gucci ripoffs. The town has a historic Old Town etc but not many people stay and those that do don't celebrate their holiday much.
The camp was originally Polish army barracks and the buildings are quite solid brick structures. A German soldier took many photos that were found and preserved. These are displayed along with some paintings done by survivors, of which there weren't many. When people arrived by train they were 'selected' to live to work for the Nazis or to die immediately in the gas chambers. It is impossible to imagine what this was like. Most had no idea what kind of a place they had arrived at, despite their treatment in the Ghettos or while under arrest. There is a photo of a soldier gicving the 'die' signal about an old man who is unaware of what is going on. There is another blurred photo of a group of children heading off to the gas chamber, blissfully unaware.
In one of the ex women's barracks are some of the collections left from Auschwitz. These are just what hadn't been disposed of when the camp was liberated. It really brings home how many people were involved and how Nazis wanted to remove the humanity and hope from these people. There are rooms filled with shoes and others with clothes or combs and brushes. A dreadful display shows suitcases, many of them named in the hope of a better future in this place they had come to. There are rooms of hair, cut off to be used for cloth manufacture and mattress stuffing, showing how the prisoners were treated like stock rather than humans.
The most telling of the photos perhaps, is one of a group of men who had been 'selected' to live (the photos of some of the women and children that Mengels and others had experimented on are unspeakable). These men had been selected to live and it was only then that the Nazis told them about the place they had come to and destroyed their delusions. They had thought they were coming to start a new life. They, like we tourists, entered through the gate that has cast iron writing above it, saying in German "work brings freedom" or similar. The photo catches them when they are told that they will all die there, that priests will live three months, Jews two and so on. Stragglers are being beaten and there is realisation on the faces of the others that they have a death sentence.
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