"Arbeit Macht Frei"

Hey y'all,

So last Thursday we took a day trip from Krakow to Auschwitz. The bus ride took about an hour and 15 minutes, so it wasn't bad at all. In my typical nature...I slept 95% of the way. Fun fact, Auschwitz is actually the German name for the Polish town Oświęcim.

Anyways, Auschwitz is made of up three camps. Auschwitz 1, 2 (Birkenau), and 3. Most visits only go to 1 and 2. Auschwitz 1 is home to this infamous sign.

Arbeit Macht Frei - Work will set you free

-Constructed by people in the labor camp

It's hard to describe the feeling I had when walking through Auschwitz. I've always enjoyed history - especially 20th century history - and so it was really neat to see this in person. It's one thing to read about it in history books, watch Schindler's list, read Elie Wiesel's Night, etc - but it's a completely different experience to actually be there, see where these people lived (and died) and walk where these people walked. Insane. 

It was tough to walk around and hear the stories and the statistics and all of that - it was one bad thing after another. It was really tough/heavy stuff to sit and listen to. To top it off, it was rainy and about 30 degrees the whole time. 

Here are a few shots from Auschwitz 1. Auschwitz 1 mainly consisted of the barracks where the prisoners lived. Each separate building had an exhibit on various aspects of the camps. 

These are cans of nitrous acid (I believe, although don't hold me to it) - that were used in the gas chambers. 

Auschwitz 1 had a gas chamber that you could walk into, which was interesting, although it was filled with the overwhelming feeling of death. 

We then took a quick 5 minute shuttle ride over to Auschwitz 2- normally referred to as Birkenau. Birkenau actually used to be a town, but was completely destroyed so the Nazis could use this as a concentration/extermination camp. Wild. 

Birkenau was convenient (for the Nazis) because the train tracks went straight through the gate and into the camp - aka it made transportation of the Jews that much easier. 

The building in the middle is the main entrance. 

There were three gas chambers at Birkenau - 2 were destroyed by the Nazis after the victory of the Allied Forces in 1944. The other gas chamber was destroyed by Jews who were living in the camp, which I found pretty interesting. This happened a few months before the Allied forces won, as the Jews were able to sneak the things they needed to make explosives into the camp (whatever that might be, I'm not a scientist...), seeing as most of them worked outside of the actual camp. In response to this rebellion, the next day, the Nazis executed over 200 Jews. 

Here's one of the typical train cars that would carry hundreds of Jews.

View of part of the camp

Watch tower

Barbed wire fences

Here's a picture of one of the gas chambers that was blown up by the Nazis. Really wild. 

Here's the wild thing about the gas chambers. The Nazis had no issues gassing the people, as in, they did their research and they knew how to do it quickly, efficiently, and very inexpensively. Apparently, there problem was with figuring out how to dispose of all of the bodies. It was either mass graves or cremation. There are still places in the camp where you can see ashes from the bodies. Out of control. 

Here's a picture of where people would sleep.

I can't even imagine.

Needless to say, it was an extremely exhausting day to see all of that and to just take everything in, but it's a place that I've wanted to visit for a very long time, so I was glad to be able to go. I had just visited the Anne Frank House with my parents, so it was interesting to see this as well. 

Luv,

Sarah