Day 22 Krakow

Birkenau

A city get's an A when the train station is in or near Old Town. It gets an A+ when it's surrounded by hotels, an A++ when information is readily available, and an A+++ when the sights are worth seeing. This is Krakow, alive with tourists from around the world, a lot of Americans and Brits, almost everyone speaks English. At the bus station directly adjacent to the train station, you can catch a bus to Auschwitz and Birkenau. Give yourself the entire day to take in this somber and sobering excursion of the two most notorious NAZI death camps. I found myself tearing up as our guide spoke in a hushed voice and we viewed in silence the large bins of suitcases, clothing, glasses, shoes, and hair of just some of the one million Jews exterminated here. The fastidious NAZIs made a distinction between concentration camps and death camps. Auschwitz and Birkenau served as both. Those coming off the train and deemed unfit to work were sent to the left and to their immediate and agonizing deaths. Those who could work were sent to the right, to the concentration camp, where they served as slave labors in nearby factories, like IG Farbin, or in the extermination of their fellow Jews. They soon would die too, of hunger, disease, and abuse - the smallest infraction punishable through starvation, suffocation, or, if lucky, being shot.

As I rode the bus to Auschwitz, gazing out at the undulating fields of golden wheat, I was tranported in time back to 1943. We had been loaded onto box cars in Hamburg. There were over 80 of us packed in a single car. We could only stand, complain, and wait; our destination and future uncertain. As the train rolled on and the hours passed, the summer heat was suffocating, the smell of people relieving themselves, as they stood erect, became insanely poignant. A woman screamed from somewhere in the car, "My mother is dead!" My father, mother, younger sister, and I, grimaced in silence, and squeezed tight each other's hand. I was pressed against the wall where a few slats of sunshine shown in. I could see some women and children in the distance cutting wheat and loading it onto a horse drawn cart. A farm appeared near the track. There were children playing in the yard and as the train approached they started to wave. I screamed, "help us!" Others in the train joined me. The train whistle blew drowning out our crys. The children kept waving. They couldn't hear us or if they could thought it was just another game adults play. My parents and sister would be dead in another hour and I, in good health, and chosen to work, lived another six months before succumbing to malnutrition and typhoid fever.