Day 14: Kraków Tour - Then Auschwitz

[Friday, June 21]

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Today was the day of our trip that I was not looking forward to. We would be going to a place no one who goes to Poland enjoys visiting, but a place everyone who goes to Poland should visit. We would be visiting the Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz, a place of barbarity and unimaginable horror. Before that, we would visit another place that the Nazis effectively put an end to, even if they did not accomplish their final solution.

But we began with a mostly walking tour of the older sections of Kraków. Our local guide for the morning was Joana, who knew a lot about the Jewish presence in Kraków before World War II. We visited sections of the old Jewish areas of Kraków. Before World War II, Kraków had the fourth largest Jewish population of any city in Poland. Over 60,000 Jews had lived in and around Kraków. Many had lived in Kazimierz, the Jewish Quarter established in the 14th Century. As in most Polish cities, not many Jews remain. Almost all Jews in Poland either fled or did not survive the war and the population has never recovered. We saw the remnants of a vibrant culture. In its place are a few synagogues and several museums and memorials. During the war, most Jews were first concentrated in a ghetto in Podgórze, across the Vistula, and finally deported to camps that most did not survive. A memorial of the deportations in Podgórze stands on Bohaterów Getta Square (“the square of the heroes of the ghetto”). In the memorial, sculptures of chairs recall the sight of a deserted ghetto full of abandoned household objects. Each chair represents 10,000 people forcibly removed, most of whom did not survive the war. All of this was mental preparation for the later tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau. But first, we went to the Wawel Castle, home of Polish kings.

Memorial in Kazimierz to the 65,000 Jews from Kraków and its surroundings murdered by the Nazis

Close up of the memorial

Synagogue in Kazimeirz

Square in Kazimeirz

Memorial in Podgórze

Close-up of memorial in Podgórze

We boarded the bus for a short ride to the shore of the Vistula River just south of Wawel (pronounced VAH-vel) hill. There is a walkway along the Vistula below the hill that is often the site of fairs and other events. When we got there, vendors were setting up stands and workers were assembling portable stages for the activities of the first weekend of summer. There is also a walkway that leads up the hill to the Castle grounds. At the base of this walkway is an iron statue of Krok Wawielski, the Wavel Dragon. It spits fire every few minutes. The dragon is tied to the Kraków's foundation myth wherein the mythical King Krak slew a dragon that had been extorting cattle from the local inhabitants. There is record of the area of Kraków being inhabited by stone age people and much later by the Vistulans, an early West Slavic tribe. The city itself is first mentioned in the 10th Century. It became the capital of Poland in the 14th century. The Jagiellonian dynasty of kings ruled Poland from Kraków from the 14th through the 16th century, Poland's golden age.

Krok Wawielski, the Wawel Dragon

Krok Wawielski spouting fire

Tower at Wawel Castle

We walked up the hill to the castle grounds. Visiting the grounds is free of charge, though there are several buildings including museums that you must pay to get into. In the outer courtyard area, there was a high school graduation going on. It was what looked like a high-end private school, named for Queen St. Jadwiga. A bunch of very well-dressed kids and their parents and relatives were seated in the courtyard. Names were called out and kids received awards and diplomas. The Polish seem to name their kids 'normal' names (unlike American parents in recent decades), so there were lots of Marysias and Mareks (Marys and Marks). One ciocia kuguarowa (cougar auntie) with way too much 'work done' had squeezed herself into a red dress and was taking pictures and otherwise making herself seen.

We walked through the inner courtyard and around the castle grounds learning a bit about Polish history during the time when the kings lived in Wawel Castle. We did not pay to enter any of the buildings and regret not having later gone into the castle itself or any of the museums. There was so much to see and do in Kraków!

From Wawel Hill we walked down to the Rynek Główny, the largest market square in Europe, to get a flavor of the old part of town. We passed numerous churches. The streets were starting to get crowded. It was the last day of school and the older kids would be given their parents' debit cards to have some fun. There would be bachelor parties and hordes of tourists wandering the streets that evening. But before that, we had to go on the dreaded side trip.

Outer courtyard area at Wawel Castle

Outer courtyard lawn Wawel with a view toward the Wawel Cathedra

High school graduation ceremony at Wawel Castle

When I retire from St. Joe's and move to Poland, I may consider a job working for Queen St. Jadwiga

Queen St. Jadwiga had a big graduating class compared to my school

Entrance to inner courtyard of the castle

Entrance archway to inner courtyard with royal symbols

Courtyard of the royal residence at Wawel

Residence of the King at Wawel Castle

Statue of Pope St. John Paul II

Patrons of the rejuvenation of Wawel Hill during the 1920s

Coming down from Wawel hill into the old town

Catholic offices across from the residence of the Archbishop of Kraków, once home of Karol Wojtyła, later Pope John Paul II

Ss. Peter and Paul Church

St. Florian's Church

Pro Palestine demonstration. Did not see much of this in Poland

Last day of school. The kids can ditch the uniforms until September

Old town hall tower in the Market Square

St. Mary's Basilica, in the market square of Kraków

Statue of the poet Adam Mickeiwicz in the market square

King Jan Sobieski, hero of the siege of Vienna

St Florian's Gate, part of what remains of the city wall of Kraków

Street performers entertain children at St. Florian's Gate

After a brief rest we boarded the bus again for Auschwitz. Our local guide for the afternoon was Anton, an immigrant from South Africa. Anton knows Polish well, but not yet well enough to pass the apparently difficult language test needed to attain Polish citizenship.

What is known as Auschwitz was actually many camps built in the environs of Oswiecim, a small village about 45 miles west of Kraków. Shortly after defeating the Poles in lat 1939, the Nazis converted Auschwitz I, a Polish army barracks, into a prisoner of war camp. The prisoners there were mainly Polish undesirables: criminals, resistance fighters, and political detainees. The prisoners were very cruelly treated and often executed. Soon the camp was used to house Jewish detainees who were to be put to work in slave labor factories in the nearby countryside. The Nazis had emptied the immediate environs of these camps and factories of their Polish inhabitants. (My maternal grandfather was born in nearby Babice, a small town that was probably emptied of Poles during the construction of the camps.) Jews and other prisoners were concentrated there (in the 'concentration camp') and forced to work in inhumane conditions. Food was rationed in such a way that the workers would starve to death. Those too weak to work would be put to death. Medical experiments including sterilization, drug testing, and testing of gasses that could be used in mass killings, were carried out at Auschwitz.

In late 1941, a second camp was built a short distance away. After the 'final solution' to the Jewish problem (their extermination) was decided, the second camp, Auschwitz II - Birkenau became an extermination camp. Jews were brought in to the camp on rail cars. To prevent panic, the Jews had been told that they were being relocated to a better place than the cramped ghettos they had been forced into. The were told to bring up to 50 kg of possessions. Upon being unloaded from the trains, the possessions were taken (with the promise that they would be returned after 'processing'). The Jews were then 'selected'. Children, the old, the sick, and most women were immediately sent to the gas chambers for extermination. To prevent panic, they were told that they were being sent to showers for hygienic purposes. They were dead within hours. Those not immediately sent to their deaths were worked to near death, then gassed.

The Jews' possessions were indeed processed. The Nazis wasted nothing. Clothing, shoes, jewelry, gold teeth, eyeglasses, prosthetic devices, were all sorted to be sent back to Germany for plunder and distribution. Even the hair of the victims, shaven off upon their arrival, was sent away for industrial uses. In time, the industrial scale extermination of the prisoners lead to a backlog of their seized possessions, which were stored in buildings at Auschwitz I. These buildings came to be known as "Kanada" in prison slang, meaning a place of plenty.

Auschwitz - Birkenau was the largest of the Nazi extermination camps in an archipelago of such camps in Germany and Poland. When Birkenau was up and running, as many as 10,000 people a day could be slaughtered there. They could have easily killed more in the gas chambers. The main hold-up was the crematoria, which worked at full capacity. When they fell behind the killing rate, people were buried in mass graves. People were sent from all over Europe to be killed there. The vast majority of these people came from central and eastern Europe. Poland lost the most because it had over 30% of Europe's Jews as of 1933. Of the 11 million people slaughtered by the Nazis in death camps (6 million of them Jews), over 1 million of them were killed in the Auschwitz complex of camps.

The tour of Auschwitz took about an hour. We were told about the transformation of that camp from a Polish army barracks to a detainment center for political prisoners to a death camp. The tour took us through the barracks, and to rooms converted to display areas for some of the possessions of people killed by the Nazis. We also heard the story of Witold Pilecki, a Polish army officer. One of his many brave exploits was that he volunteered to be imprisoned at Auschwitz using a false identity and to smuggle out reports about the situation inside the camp. Among his other goals from within the camp were to use his reporting to convince the Allies to attempt to drop weapons into the camp and the Polish resistance to mount an assault on it. Inside the camp, he worked on organizing prisoners, smuggling and distributing food to lessen the suffering of some. When his position at the camp became untenable, he and a few others escaped and he continued to work in the Polish resistance and later fought in the Warsaw Uprising. After the war, he fought to resist the Communists and was imprisoned, tortured, and executed by them.

Entrance to the grounds of Auschwitz I

Memorial plaques at Auschwitz I

System of camps near Auschwitz

Auschwitz I was originally a Polish army barracks

Cynical lie over gate to Auschwitz I: Arbeit Macht Frei - Work Makes You Free

Auschwitz tour guide explains how Jews from all over Europe were sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex

Breakdown of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau

Memorial of ashes from the crematoria

Almost all women and children would be killed upon their arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Trainloads of people arriving at Birkenau

Model of gas chamber at Birkenau

Canisters that contained Zyklon B, a chemical that would produced hydrogen cyanide gas on exposure to heat and water

Eyeglasses of prisoners

Prayer shawls of prisoners

Crutches and prosthetic limbs of prisoners

Shoes of prisoners

Suitcases with the names of prisoners

Shoe of prisoner boy who died at Auschwitz. After the war, identifying information found inside the shoe enabled researchers to locate his father who had survived the war

Warning sign inside Auscwhitz

Office inside Auschwitz

Cell of Fr. Maximillian Kolbe, who offered his life in exchange for that of another prisoner at Auschwitz I

Execution wall at Auschwitz I

Gas chamber at Auschwitz I

Crematorium at Auschwitz I

After our tour of Auschwitz I, we boarded the bus for a very short ride to Auschwitz II - Birkenau, a camp whose sole purpose was mass extermination. Unlike Auschwitz I, which started out as a detention center and evolved to become a place where most people who came there died, Birkenau was conceived and built purely as an extermination camp. Prisoners were either killed upon their arrival, or, if they were able bodied, worked to near death in nearby labor camps and then killed. There was less to see at Birkenau: Most of the buildings were made cheaply of wood to temporarily house prisoners in the barest of shelter. Most of these barracks were dismantled after the war by Poles looking for salvageable fuel and building material. The gas chambers and crematoria had already been destroyed by the Nazis before they fled. Only a few barracks, rebuilt for display purposes, and the brick buildings at the entrance gate remain. But despite few remnants, the size of the place and scale of the killings were readily apparent. The remaining brick chimneys of the hundreds of barracks that once stood there looked like ghostly scarecrows across many acres.

Entrance to Auscwhitz II - Birkenau

Prisoner barracks without the beds showing size of building

Toilet building: prisoners were only allowed to use the toilet twice a day

Remains of the chimneys of heating stoves of some of the several hundred prisoner barracks that once stood at Birkenau

Typical prisoner barracks: Several people were in each bed

Small stove provided meager warmth

After a long, somber, and sobering afternoon, we went back to Kraków for an evening meal and a walk around the old town square. Tomorrow we would go on the last of our side excursions with Gate 1: a tour to the Wieliczka Salt Mines.