Poland

This weeks blog will be a little difficult to write about for me, because I saw a lot of things in a short amount of time this weekend. We spent 3 days in Poland where we visited the salt mines of Krakow, Shindler's Factory, and the Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration camps. I knew this would be a lot to soak in for one weekend, but I knew it was something I'd been wanting to see my whole life and I think it is something that I will remember forever.

Saturday morning, we left for Krakow, Poland to visit the Salt mines there. When we arrived to the salt mine and went down 54 flights of stairs which was like over 80 meters below the surface, but still above sea level. It took about 15 minutes to get down the stairs. The tour of the mine consisted of our tour guide telling us how the miners harvested and transported the salt, how the salt preserved wood, and how they navigated through the mines. It was very cool to experience the mines- it was like nothing I'd ever seen before.  Once we got to places where there was water, our tour guide let us taste how salty it was, and even encouraged us to taste the walls because they were made out of salt. Something really cool that I learned, is that they had horses down in the mines that would work and help the miners transport the salt. When the horse was old enough they would take them down and train them. The life expectancy of the horses actually increased while they were down in the mines because of the salt that was in the air. When the horse had reached an old enough age, they would be brought back up to surface to live out the rest of their lives peacefully. By the end of the tour, we were at about 129 meters below the surface (still above sea level). We rode the elevator up to the surface and loaded the bus back up to go to our hostel. The rest of the day was spent exploring the town of Krakow and getting some food before the long day we had ahead of us.

Sunday morning, we walked for only about 15 minutes to get to Schindler's factory. A little background about Oskar Schindler... Oskar was a German living in Krakow at the time of WWII. He took over his father's shut-down factory which produced pots, pans, door hinges, knobs, and lots of other metal products. At the time of the war when the Nazi police were evacuating and demolishing the Jewish Ghetto's, Schindler was losing workers. He and his accountant who was also a Jew decided that he would make sure to get more and more workers so he could make money within his factory. Once he realized that he was saving many lives by employing these Jews he decided to make a list of names of every Jew he knew so they wouldn't get sent to the concentration camps. By the end of the war, he saved 12,000 Jews from meeting their horrible fate in the concentration camps. Schindler was a hero to all. His factory was preserved and made into a museum to show just how much of an impact he made.

As we walked through the museum, it started from the beginning. It was kind of a timeline of the war. It started out with how the war started, and ended with the liberation and included almost everything in between. There was a part about the ghettos and how they were all destroyed. There were letters on the walls from the Jews that lived there about what they were feeling and experiencing. This was a hard part for me because it showed real emotion from those people. As we got toward the end of the factory, there was a room with quotes from some of the people Schindler saved. The one that stood out to me the most read, "He employed me at his factory, although he knew I would be useless for him." This stood out to me, because in the movie 'Schindler's List' there was a man with no arm who he hired to work for him and when the Nazi police tried to kill him, Schindler stopped him and explained the importance he had in his factory. He did this for many people, especially the elderly and the children. A lot of people tried to save the Jews. Some succeeded, and some did not but Oscar Schindler used his strong business mentality to save 12,000 PEOPLE and he made a huge impact on WWII.


Monday morning, we left for the Auschwitz concentration camp at 6:00 AM. It was about an hour and a half bus ride to get to the camp. I somewhat knew what to expect walking into the camp because of the knowledge I have acquired over my years in high school history, and what we have learned here in the Czech Republic. What didn't expect, were the emotions that flooded through me when I entered the concentration camp that morning. I made sure to stay very close to the tour guide so I could learn as much as possible as we went through our tour. After the first camp, we went to Auschwitz-Birkenau which was a death camp. The Jews that were sent there would get off the train and be picked off by who was the strongest. The weakest would be sent to the gas chambers and killed immediately. The stronger ones would work until they died of starvation.

What I have learned and seen in movies will never compare to what I saw, and what I learned about the concentration camps. Being there, walking where they walked, walking where over millions of PEOPLE died for no reason at all will forever haunt me. It will also help me understand only a little bit of what they went through during the Holocaust. I can't even imagine that happening today in our world, which is crazy, because it happened not too long ago. Humans are capable of horrible horrible things, and I genuinely hope that history doesn't repeat itself. I hope we learn from the inhumane things that happened and never let them happen again.

I'm sorry that I couldn't write more about my experience, but it is a very hard thing to write about. Everyone should get a chance to see these concentration camps at least once in their lives and experience it for themselves.