Scandanvia and the Balkins Day 4

 Day 4: Auschwitz and Wieliczka Salt Mine

 

After a short night, Robert picked us up at 7:45 for a very full day.  The drive to Auschwitz was about 1 ½ hours through the Polish countryside.  The scenery was beautiful, hard to believe that so much evil resided here at one time.  

 

Auschwitz concentration camp was established in 1940 by the Nazis after annexation of Poland.  It had been a Polish army camp since the 1^st Word War but had fallen into disuse prior to this time.  The town was Oswiecim but renamed with the German name Auschwitz.  Originally, the Germans built it to house Poles whose internment was overtaxing the Polish prisons. But after the Wannsee Conference in 1942, it became the premier camp for the final solution to the Jewish question, the extermination of all 11 million European Jews.  Gas chambers and crematoria were built to streamline mass murder, and 2 additional camps, including the much larger Birkenau less than a mile from Auschwitz and Buna, about 2 miles from Auschwitz, were constructed.

 

"Auschwitz I" (the number of prisoners fluctuated around 15,000, sometimes rising above 20,000).

The second part was the Birkenau camp (which held over 90,000 prisoners in 1944), also known as "Auschwitz II" This was the largest part of the Auschwitz complex. The Nazis began building it in 1941 on the site of the village of Brzezinka, three kilometers from Oswiecim. The Polish civilian population was evicted and their houses confiscated and demolished. The greater part of the apparatus of mass extermination was built in Birkenau and the majority of the victims were murdered here.

More than 40 sub-camps, exploiting the prisoners as slave laborers, were founded, mainly at various sorts of German industrial plants and farms, between 1942 and 1944. The largest of them was called Buna (with ten thousand prisoners) and was opened by the camp administration in 1942 on the grounds of the Buna-Werke synthetic rubber and fuel plant six kilometers from the Auschwitz camp. 

Auschwitz I was the first of the two camps we visited.  Upon entering, we saw the gate that infamously states “Arbeit macht frei” or Work makes you free, a bit of very black Nazi humor. 

The camp today is primarily a museum and has a bit of a sterilized feel to it for the most part.  A superficial look belied the horrors that inmates had to suffer including beatings, starvation (300-1000 calories per day), human experimentation, as well as the constant threat of death. The camp buildings, barbed wire, and guard towers are all there, though. 

There are some very chilling visages ;the shoes, prosthetics, cookware, and clothes taken from the prisoners after their murders,

the gallows where people were hung to intimidate other prisoners, the hospital where Dr. Mengele and others carried out horrific experiments on children and pregnant women,

the wall where firing squads murdered many inmates. 

But the worst was walking into the gas chamber, looking up at the “air vents” where the crystals of Cyklon B were dumped onto the unsuspecting men women and children, and imagining the panic of as many as 2,000 people a day as they suffocated.  

Entrance to the gas chamber

Crematoium

Ashes of the dead

Holocaust deniers should be forced to visit this site.

 

We were driven to the 2^nd camp, Birkenau for the remainder of the visit.  Birkenau had been almost completely destroyed by the Nazis at the end of the war to try to cover up the mass murder that occurred here.  We entered the camp along the train tracks  as prisoners did but they did it  in cattle boxcars in stifling heat or freezing cold.  

 

Most of what is left there are the chimneys of each of the barracks, lined up as far as the eye could see. 

There is also the remains of the crematoria and gas chambers that were demolished by the retreating guards and memorials to the dead.

 

A few of the barracks remained and we were allowed to walk through to view the living conditions.

 

All in all, a very sobering morning.

 

From here, we drove about an hour to the Wieliczka salt mine, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Salt has been used for millenia as a preservation for foods and until fairly recently, with the advent of refrigeration, it was so critical that it was an extremely valuable commodity.  The salt has been mined here for nearly 700 years, In the 13th century, while one of the saline wells was being dug, the first lumps of rock salt were accidentally found. The discovery of the valuable raw material turned out to be revolutionary. It made it possible to obtain salt by mining methods – the first shaft leading underground was struck as early as the second half of the 13th century. In the 14th century, 1/3 of Kasamir the Great's treasury came from profits from salt production and the high profits from salt mining enabled him, among other things, to found the Krakow Academy – the first university in Poland.

By the end of the 15th century, tourism in the mine had already begun and one of the earliest known tourists was Nicholas Copernicus.  

Over the years, the shaft was deepened and eventually made it to nearly 1000'. 

Salt mining went on 24 hours a day and by the 1800's, salt extraction using gunpowder was started, a railway line was built underground, a steam hoisting machine and a power plant were commissioned, and the production of salt reached its peak.

During this time, tourism also flourished  with as many as 100 visitors per week.  Attractions were created for guests including horse drawn carriage rides and boat rides on underground lakes.

Miners lighting methane gas to prevent buildup and explosions

There were churches  for the miners, and a huge cathedral for the guests that is still used for weddings and other functions.

It was interesting but a long run for a short slide.  Robert left us back at the hotel, and we walked around the corner to the old Jewish quarter to find some dinner.  The hotel concierge had recommended a restaurant, which we nixed when we sa the menu.  We strolled around and found the Klezmer Hois (House) whci was situated in an old building with an even older courtyard.  There menu looked like something right out of my grandmother's kitchen; choulent, kugel, soup with kreplach, knishes.  It was a great dinner, not quite grandma Gussie's (and then Mom and now Marla's) exact recipes, but close!

Another big walking day tomorrow, the old town and the Jewish quarter.