As part of my trip in the fall (Sept.12-27th) I'm planning on going to Poland. More specifically, Warsaw and Auschwitz. (The reasons aren't personal, in that any of my family went through the Holocaust; however, the reasons are too intangible at the moment to get into
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You just reminded me of an interview I once saw with a survivor of the Holocaust.
I can't remember exactly what it was in reference to, but she said something to the effect of:
"When people complain about boring evenings at home, I give thanks that I lived through the horror-- and each boring evening at home is precious to me."
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Yes. The fact of the matter is -and this is something that a lot of people don't take into consideration or realize- it's not like Auschwitz was in the middle of nowhere. It was the name of a town first, the camp second. And for many, the scale of it is uncomprehensible, but AuschwitzII-Birkenau (Camp II) could hold over 150,000 people at a time (highest population at one time- 155,000). The gas chambers (in total square footage of all the chambers in Birkenau) were large enough to hold over 4000 people. 4000. How can anyone get their mind around that ( ... )
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Not to sound all shallow by giving trip advice, but you should try to check out Krakow and the nearby salt mines. The salt mines have an underground church sculpted entirely of salt, it's pretty amazing to see. Krakow is fun, cheap, small, lots of parks and a castle and little coffee shops, you can see pretty much the whole thing in a day or two. Where else are you going to be going?
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I think... you can only know for yourself when you are ready for it. You weren't ready, and there's nothing wrong with that. A few years ago, I wouldn't have been ready, either. But I've been searching for something in the last year or so. I don't even know what that is, really, but there's something in me that needs to face this, now, in my life.
I'm flying into Krakow from Dublin. I can take a bus from Krakow to the Auschwitz camp, and Birkenau is a fifteen minute walk from there. From everything I've heard, it's actually Birkenau that's the hardest to digest, because everything in Auschwitz has been restored and is very "museum-like". It is Birkenau that they've left everything as it was (with the exception of some structural updates). The small pond that was near crematorium IV and V is still there- the ashes of thousands of victims were dumped there in order to try and get rid of the evidence of what the Nazis were doing. Visitors ( ... )
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When we got off the train, we ended up by the bus depot, and there were all these guys trying to get us to ride in their private cars to the camps and I just thought it was odd how they had turned these memorials of unspeakable horror into a financial opportunity. Sort of like when I see people selling little crystal models of the Twin Towers with holes in the sides and crystal smoke pouring out.
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