We get up a little later than in previous days, knowing that the main focus of today is our visit to the former Nazi concentration/extermination camp at Auschwitz. We aren’t due to leave until 1.45pm, and so we opt to have a relatively easy morning before that.
We head downstairs for our hotel breakfast. One of the things we’d read about in the reviews was that the breakfast at this hotel was superb. This, in addition to the tip that this hotel has air conditioning whereas others in the same price-bracket don’t, convinced us to book. As it turned out the breakfast was passable, and there was no way to turn the air conditioning on despite it being a hot and humid city.
We leave the hotel and decide to take a wander down to the castle. Actually, we plan to walk to the nearest tram stop and take the tram to the castle, but by the time we get there we realise we’re already half way to the castle and so choose to just walk the remainder. Nearby a signpost indicates distances to major cities: 300km to our next stop in Bratislava, 295km to our final point in Budapest. Standing here, our planned route seems a bit daft!
High on a cliff above the river an enormous medieval fortress was built. Most of the gates and walls are still standing, but the interior has changed dramatically. Originally built as a military stronghold, over time the castle began to shift into being a place of residence rather than just of defence. The main structures had been replaced, sometimes in the 15th and 16th Centuries, with an elaborate Renaissance palace and gardens.
We walk around the walls and look out over the river and the Old Town. In one of the former turrets is the “dragon’s lair” – an attraction for kids. All around the city we’d been seeing dragon symbolism, and it wasn’t until later that we read the story of an old Polish king who had subdued a dragon’s attack on the city and kept it for defence.
Inside the walls the original Cathedral is still standing, even though its main domed roof was being renovated. It is interesting to see a new copper roof before oxidisation took hold and turns it green, however. The Cathedral was where the kings of Poland had been crowned, and where they were later buried in elaborate caskets. The relics of a number of saints were venerated in smaller side chapels.
We leave the castle and walk back down to the road. On the corner a small boy is playing accordion. He’s mastered both the rhythm and the flourish of pushing and pulling the bellows, but he definitely needs to work on the melody and chords. Although tempted to give him a bit of busking money for at least trying, we remember a poster in the main square that warned about the use of children as an income source in the city. Krakow, it appears, is fighting an epidemic of parents who send their small children out to make money from tourists rather than attending school. We don’t give him any money.
We walk back into the Old Town up a quiet cobbled street. Compared to the circus that is the main square, the southern alleyways and squares are much quieter. It’s midday, and a number of cafes and bars are just opening their shutters. We spy a place that advertises ‘Ale Ale’ beer, and make a mental note to come back to give that a go at some point. We pass a car full of cabbages.
Arriving in the main square, we take a look in the old cloth hall. A 16th century construction, it’s now a souvenir market with dozens of stalls all selling the same range of cuddly dragon toys and amber jewellery. Round the corner, though, is the entrance to Krakow’s newest museum. In 2005-6 an extensive archaeological survey was conducted at the eastern end of the main square before it was repaved. The finds, which included digging down to – and below – the original street level from the 13th century, exposed the foundations and basements of previous structures and in one place even a 12th century burial site for people suspected of vampirism. We decide we want to visit, but as the exhibition involves walking around the exposed remains entry numbers are, understandably, limited. We therefore buy a timed ticket for the following evening.
By this point we decide it’s time to head back to the hotel and prepare for our visit to Auschwitz. Impossible to express in words, we simply felt we couldn’t be so close and not visit. We change out of our shorts and t-shirts in an attempt to wear something a bit more ‘appropriate’ to visiting such a site. It’s a shallow gesture, but frankly it would have felt wrong walking round as if it’s ‘just’ another day trip.
We get to the tour office, which is just behind the Barbican of the old city walls, and decide to get lunch at the cafe next door while we wait for the tour to set off. The place looks nice enough and quick enough from the outside but when we get in and start looking at the menu we think something is missing, but at first can’t work out what. It turns out to be a vegetarian restaurant, but this isn’t a problem as we tuck in to some good food; including some of the famous Polish potato pancakes we enjoyed last night. We finish and head outside to wait for the group to gather.
Looking at people waiting for the tour there seem to be two groups; one is the older visitor to Krakow and the other is the younger back-packing/inter-railing visitor. More people start to gravitate towards the tour office and we realise that actually it is quite a large tour that is going - over a coach-load – and so we hope that we’ll split into smaller groups when we get there. With hindsight we figure that this is maybe the downside to booking with a popular company.
On the coach and we trying to reserve judgement of the younger people that are on the trip. It’s unfortunate that the first 10 minutes of the journey are spent with the company guide trying to get the microphone/speaker system to work as people towards the back are saying they can’t hear. Although there’s definitely a problem with the system, it isn’t helped by people at the back of the coach talking over her. A particular group really gets our hackles up – a bunch of girls in stupidly short shorts and strappy tops seem to be acting like they’re the cool kids at the back of the bus on a school trip. Finally someone “shushes” them and the guide begins to present an overview of the history of the camp.
Having taught some difficult topics – including the Holocaust – I know the important of finding the right balance in presenting a narrative. The guide, we feel, gets it right with a calm yet direct description of Poland’s history from 1939 and the Nazis’ development of the Final Solution. You can’t really pull any punches with this stuff – you either tell it in full, or do the history a disservice. It was interesting to hear this from a Polish perspective, however. After all Poland was home to an enormous number of Jews and gypsies before the German invasion in September 1939, and Poles who did not belong to these notable minorities were themselves targets of Nazi hatred due to their Slavic origins or active role in the resistance. To have such a place as Auschwitz built on your land by an occupying force and then used to kill your own people is unimaginable.
Auschwitz, we learned, was the Germanised name for the Polish town of Oswiencen. As a major railway junction surrounded by miles of fields in every direction, its remoteness suited the Nazis plans. The original camp – Auschwitz I – was converted from Polish army barracks shortly after the Nazi occupation. Thousands of Poles were forced out of their homes and off their land, to be resettled elsewhere in the country. Indeed, Auschwitz was the only Nazi camp with an enforced military safety zone surrounding it – miles of land were not only a buffer, but also would later allow for the enormous expansion of a killing factory with the construction of Auschwitz II Berkenau nearby.
In preparing to visit, a line from The History Boys was constantly running through our minds. “They do trips to Auschwitz now, you know. My question is where do they eat their packed lunch?” On a coach with 50 other people, half of whom had probably been on a pub crawl the previous night and were planning on walking around the site in flip-flops and a pair of shorts, the ridiculous nature of the ‘day trip’ really began to gnaw away at us. Having been divided into smaller groups to view the site, we were relieved to be grouped with some of the older members of the tour and not the aforementioned party-goers.
Arriving in the coach park was as surreal as it sounds, especially considering the blazing sunshine. Joining the crowds of people walking through the visitor centre in single file to collect our radio headsets for use during the tour seemed ironic in the worst possible way. Gathering into groups, the rules of the visit being listed as if from a script…it all seemed highly mechanised and, well, efficient.
Conducting a tour in this way was, however, incredibly effective. After passing under the iconic gate – if something that represents vulgarity can be iconic – with the words ‘Arbeit Mach Frei’ above you, there was no time to just stand and look at where we were. Normally we’d be heavily critical of such an approach, but in this case the constant ‘and this, and this, and this’ of information and statistics from our guide completely saturated your comprehension. It’s possible to read the books, to watch the documentaries, to be able to reel off the facts and figures. But nothing – no matter how much you know (or think you know) about Auschwitz prepares you for being there. Similarly, the scale of the destruction of humanity is impossible to capture.
Although they are actually keen for you to take photographs, and many did, it would have been simply impossible to capture the amount of material presented there as an indicator of the quantity of murders. The desire by some people, however, to be photographed in front of the buildings struck us as rather macabre. Perhaps Facebook’s hold on people, and the importance of ‘tagging’ yourself in photographs, means that you can only prove to have been somewhere if you’re in the picture. but quite why you’d want to be photographed under the gate at Auschwitz, or outside a gas chamber, is completely unfathomable to us. However, it is true that no words can describe entering the one remaining gas chamber and crematorium (the Nazis blew up the others when it was clear that the Soviets were advancing). It is a place that, put simply, has to be seen.
After a short break we were driven 2km to Auschwitz II Berkenau. This was the site of the largest number of murders; the place with the red-brick gatehouse built over the railway line, at the side of which the ‘selections’ were made. There are few surviving buildings here now - again the advancing Soviet troops meant the Nazi’s destroyed what they could - but a handful of wooden barracks remain and row upon row of crumbling chimneys mark where those that were burnt down would have stood, whilst at the end of the site the overgrown concrete rubble of were once the gas chambers and crematoriums lie. The only new construction on site is the central memorial at the end of the railway tracks. Everything else has been left as it was found by the Soviets in January 1945.
During the journey back to Krakow we were shown a film consisting of extracts from the Soviet footage of the liberation of the camp. The bus was notably silent. We couldn’t help but feel reassured that those people whose attitude boarding the bus in Krakow had given us cause for concern had clearly been affected just as much by the experience as we had.
Arriving in Krakow at about 8pm, we are exhausted. It’s been a tiring day – physically and emotionally – but we need to eat before heading to bed. We head to the main square and grab a table at the first place we come across. As it turns out, Hawelka has a long and distinguished history and we have made a good choice. After eating we stop off at the ‘Ale Ale’ pub for a drink before heading to bed. We order an ‘Ale Ale’ and an ‘orange beer’, which turns out to be lager mixed with orangeade. It’s surprisingly tasty, but we’re completely knackered by this point so rather than stay out any longer we limp back to bed.
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