Auschwitz!

Week 13 –Cultural Development – 26^th May 2011

Krakow

This week saw my first visitor in Poland. Kathryn came for the weekend. At first it felt so weird that she was here. For the past three months it has been like I have been living in a completely different world with no overlap between my life here and my life back in Northern Ireland but I was so glad for her to meet my friends here and to see all the places she had heard me talk about.

We spent the weekend in Krakow, a city that I have really fallen in love with, as there is so much culture and beauty. It was great to return. The last time I visited Krakow I did not have the opportunity to visit Auschwitz, the Polish concentration camp and therefore I definitely wanted to visit it this time around. The camp was established in 1940 and was the biggest Nazi concentration camp in Poland. It also became an extermination camp where more than one and a half million people were killed. The majority of victims were Jew from Central Europe with the next largest group of victims being Poles. Therefore Auschwitz is not only seen, as a symbol of terror, genocide, and the Holocaust but it is also a huge part of not only European but particularly Polish history.

Auschwitz wasn’t quite what I expected. I expected the camp to be in the same conditions as it was during the war. Unfortunately after the war, the German solders burnt down a lot of the concentration camp but some remained. New buildings were built and old building have been refurbished and turned into museums or exhibitions. These provided us with plenty of opportunities to find out more about Auschwitz. Being in the museums, reading about what happened and seeing pictures of the people that were brought here made it very real for me. It was so sad to see how these people, including young children, were treated. We also had the opportunity to see inside one of the gas chambers, and learn about how these were used as part of the greatest mass murders in the history of humanity.

Since I have arrived in Poland I have been told that I have to visit Auschwitz because of its huge importance in terms of this country’s history. Although I am very glad that I got to visit, it is an extremely sad place, with a history full of pain, suffering and death. It was very moving to be there and to hear about what happened in Auschwitz and it is definitely a place that I will never forget.

Until next time,

Jeff





Auschwitz