Auschwitz-Birkenau. FYI.
Written: Mar 12 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Visual evidence of Holocaust
Cons: None
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| AlexG's Full Review: Oswiecim (Auschwitz) |
Krakow is usually the home base for anyone visiting Oswiecim or Auschwitz--its infamous German name. It is a day trip certainly worth taking. There are several ways to get to Oswiecim from Krakow. I recommend the last one on the list.
a) You can take an organized tour (in English, of course). You will board the bus in the center of Krakow (Main Market Square) and come back to the same spot in the evening. The cost is considerably more expensive than what you would pay for getting to Oswiecim on your own. Lonely Planet’s information is somewhat outdated.
b) You can take a bus from the main bus terminal, located directly across the Krakow Glowny train station. There are about 10 buses per day, so you shouldn’t have a problem.
c) Taxi is always an option (an expensive one, I should add). My advice--don’t do it. You are going to Auschwitz. Comfortable transportation just doesn’t seem right.
d) You can (and you should) take a train, just like millions of people who did it against their will. I think taking a train to Auschwitz means something symbolic, though I can’t express it in words. And do me a favor, don’t buy the first class ticket.
I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau on August 2, 1999--a cloudy, at times drizzly, chilly day, which I thought was the appropriate atmosphere (state of mind) for visiting this place. There were five of us--two of my friends with whom I was backpacking, one guy from Minneapolis and one girl from Atlanta, whom we had met on the Berlin-Krakow train the night before. We arrived in Krakow around 8 am. After unloading our backpacks in the hotel (Krakow is cheap, so there was not point staying in a hostel outside of the Old Town), we went back to the Krakow Glowny train station. I speak Russian and Ukrainian, so I was the designated communicator for dealing with the locals, because Polish is also a Slavic family language. The train ticket cost 37 zloty. The conversion was 4 zloty = $1. Oh yeah, that’s 37 zloty for 5 of us. Oswiecim is 65km (1 train hour ride) from Krakow.
After we bought tickets (they are day-specific, but not train-specific), we looked at the schedule for the next train going to Auschwitz, and noticed that there was one leaving in 5 minutes. So, we quickly ran to the platform and hopped in. About 10 minutes into the ride, the female conductor came into our compartment to check our tickets. She started saying something in Polish that none of us could understand, but in sign language it meant that we had to pay her something extra. Apparently, from what I understood, our tickets were for the commuter train, and the train that we were on was the Krakow-Vienna express train, making a stop in Oswiecim. Certainly, when we bought tickets, nobody informed us of this difference.
This wasn’t my first time in Eastern Europe (I was born there), and it isn’t a big surprise to me that whenever the locals have a chance to get some extra cash from “wealthy” Americans they take advantage of it. However, usually there is a limit to one’s impudence. When the conductor wrote the amount we had to additionally pay (163 zloty), I was taken aback. Luckily or unluckily she didn’t speak any English, so we could discuss the strategy about how to deal with the situation in her presence. After she asked for our passports it became apparent that we would have a problem getting to our final destination without paying her something. We said that we left our passports in Krakow, and that we only have 50 zloty cash among all of us, which she finally angrily accepted and even wrote us some fake-looking receipt, as if the money didn’t go into her pocket. After that she left us alone for the remainder of the ride.
We got off the train, crossed a few tracks, and faced a small, quiet, old-looking train station with the most chilling name I have ever seen--Oswiecim. From the train station there are local buses running to the Auschwitz camp. We walked. It’s only 1 mile. The admission is free, and photo and video cameras are permitted free of charge. However, guided tours in English are about $4, and the tour is about 3 hours. Definitely take the tour. I’ve heard that if you get lucky, your guide may be one of the camp’s survivors. It wasn’t the case with us, but our guide--a young Polish woman, whose name I can’t remember now, was very good.
The tour consists of two parts--two separate camps: Auschwitz (or Auschwitz I) and Birkenau (or Auschwitz II). Auschwitz I is the starting point of the tour, and one enters through the infamous gates with the sign, “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Works Makes Free). Auschwitz was only partially destroyed by the Nazis, and many of the original buildings survived, including the gas chamber and crematorium--all of which you can view from the inside. You go through the undressing room, then to the gas chamber, then to the ovens. Fortunately, you come out alive. The barracks, the prison cells, the torture cells, the medical experiments offices, the yard with the wall where people faced the firing squad, and other horrific places you will visit on this tour.
The tour continues in Birkenau, where most of the extermination took place. (Either take a bus for 75 cents or walk 1.2 miles). You enter through the same gates the Nazi trains entered during the Holocaust as seen in “Schindler’s List.” The entrance tower is open to visitors, and I highly recommend you go up. From there you will see the enormous size of Birkenau, which had over 300 barracks. Almost all barracks to the right of the rail tracks were burned by the retreating Nazis. But the chimneys remain to tell the story of the magnitude of the crime. To the left of the tracks, you will see most of the surviving barracks, and some of them are open to visitors. At the back of Birkenau are the remains of two crematories which Nazi had the time to burn down before they left. At the very end of the camp there is a memorial to the dead.
After you are done touring Birkenau, unless you want to do some more walking (and I doubt you will), you’ll need to take the bus back to Auschwitz in order to catch the bus to the train station. While at Auschwitz you may want to watch a 15-minute documentary film, made by the Soviet Army during the liberation of the camps.
It felt almost unreal visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau, but it’s certainly never to be forgotten.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
AlexG
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Location: New York, NY
Reviews written: 130
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About Me:
Alex has a voracious appetite for travel. Travel hasn't satisfied an appetite. It's created one.
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