Auschwitz

 

The next day we headed out to one of our main destinations-Auschwitz. It is a place that I have been wanting to visit for a long time, but I have to say that the night before going I started getting cold feet. Some had expressed that they thought it was a bit strange that I was planning on taking my kids there, and Daniel wasn't exactly as enthusiastic as me. But it was him that made the call to go on the day we went, so next thing I new we were on the minibus to Auschwitz.  

We started our visit at Auschwitz II, or Auschwitz Birkenau. Jaxon walking along the train tracks that brought hundreds of thousands of Jews to the selecting platform. "Jaxon, smile! No, no, not like that, a little more subdued..."

Better.

The latrines. The prisoners had no running water in their restrooms and were responsible for cleaning them themselves, so you can imagine their condition... The bright side was that the Nazis wouldn't go near the place so it became the center for the black market and resistance movements.  

Next we headed over the Auschwitz I.

I love this; the prisoners were in charge of welding the notorious "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("work makes you free") sign over the gate and simply out of belligerence welded the B upside down. 

The museum at Auschwitz 1 was very tasteful and did a particularly good job of humanizing the victims. In this particular building they had displayed the victims personal belongings: mountains of adult shoes, baby shoes ("They killed babies?!"-Jaxon was shocked), prosthetics, suitcases, dishes, hair... Up until that point Jaxon had taken a lot of comfort in the fact that he had blond hair and blue eyes, therefore he wouldn't have been killed, he would have been sent to a German family to be germanized. He seemed a little disconcerted, however, when he found a lock of blond hair in the hair mountain.

It is hard to capture in words, but the whole experience was very moving and powerful, and we had no regrets in going. You can read about these events in books, but it doesn't compare to standing on the ground where the events took place, looking at the eyes of the victims in their photographs.  Daniel was very impressed and Jaxon even named it later as his favorite part of the trip. It certainly leaves you with a renewed commitment to rid yourself of hate and discrimination, as really this whole thing started with rhetoric and small acts before blowing up into a genocide. If nothing else I hope that is what Jaxon will be able to remember. I think that Jonas is only going to remember walking along the railroad tracks at Auschwitz Birkenau. He thoroughly enjoyed that.

Afterward we went back to catch the unreliable minibus. I say unreliable as two that were supposed to come never came. So we ended up waiting for about an hour and a half before one came. But we made it back to Krakow.