A Somber Look into our World's Past

After the exciting overnight train into Krakow, we arrived to a beautiful day with warm sunshine, which was a welcome change from the cold rain. Our hostel, the Pink Flamingo, was about 200 yards from the Old Town Center and a perfect location for our stay. We decided to do another bike tour in Krakow as well.

The Bike Tour was very informative and we definitely saw more of Krakow on Bike than we would have thought to see. Of course, about 1 hour into the bike ride, it started to rain. Therefore, I really don't have any good pictures of this trip. We did manage to go by the Fire Spitting Dragon which is at the base of the castle:




















Krakow is also home of the film Schindler's List. About half of our tour was geared toward WWII and the takeover by the Nazi's. The story about Mr. Schindler and his factory and how he saved thousand's of lives from the concentrations camps is very moving.




















The next day, we went to Auschwitz which was about an hour or so by train away from Krakow. After spending 1 hour trying to find the bus to take us there, we ended up getting on the train instead.

I didn't take very many pictures while at the camp site. I just didn't feel as though it was appropriate. However, we did take a guided tour through the two camps, Auschwitz and Birkenau. Most of Aushwitz is still standing. The buidlings were made of brick and you can still get a feeling of what it must have felt like to stay there. Birkenau, however, as most of the buildings were made of wood, except for a few, were burned to the ground. Our tour guide's father in-law was a prisoner of Auschwitz and was liberated by the Russians. It was very neat to know that our tour guide had a deep respect for what she was telling us.















This is the train station that the train bringing prisoners the death camp of Birkenau passed through.















It's hard to describe your feelings and thoughts as you passed through the different buildings and looked at the different exhibits. Many of the displays showed the objects that the liberators found when they came to the camps: 4 tons of hair that was cut off of people who had died in the gas chambers; 40,000 pairs of shoes; eye glasses; luggage bearing the names of people who had died (and lived as we heard from our tour guide that a man who came back to the campsite saw his suitcase in teh display); pots and pans from families who thought that they were being moved to a "better life".

It's hard to beleive how one man can cause the entire world can have a face lift and change their thinking forcing the world to never be the same again.