Site icon Folksy Travel by Bill Smale

Visiting Auschwitz

When you come to Poland it is a good idea to visit Auschwitz and Birkenau. It seems you need to book individual entry up to a month in advance and they probably put you in a group? Most everyone was in a group tour which is advisable since there is a progression of buildings to visit and the details are extremely important. The camp you visit is just one of many built to house and mass murder people. There were more than 900 concentration camps built for the NAZIs to house and kill their victims. You will see the living quarters, execution walls, extermination showers and all other buildings preserved by former victims housed here. You will see collections of clothes and personal things left from those killed there as well as tons of hair shaved off before execution, used to make coats and blankets.

Hydrogen Cyanide canisters left in piles after used to kill victims ushered in to “take showers”.. The rooms next to the showers were incinerators to burn the bodies. Some of the ash was used as fertilizer .
We arrived at 7:00 and waited 30 minutes in freezing weather for the gates to open. Our bus picked us up and returned us to Krakow. The recommended tour company was Hellow Cracow and they performed well. I paid about US$63 for the 7 hour tour
The famous gate
One of the buildings. In the first camp the premises were built for the Polish army and taken over by the Germans.
A huge camp housing up to 70,000 victims
Places where people were taken from after 1941. Before 1942 the camp was used to house Polish elite
Execution Wall
One touch of this electrified fench would kill. Some victims committed suicide this way.
Shower and incinerator bunker entrance.
Birkenau entrance
The famous mass one way transport entrance
Many mouses between the camp and the woods were used to house victims before the camp was finished. Birkenau was built from the ground up for mass extermination. The incinerators were blown up by the Germans so approaching Russians would not have evidence.
Our guide, a train car and a watch tower
Each bunk slept 6 victims.
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