Posted on Friday, 8 August 2014

Ben and I awoke to the sights and sounds of the beautiful southern Polish city of Kraków in glorious June sunshine, after a seven-and-a-half-hour train journey from Malbork the previous day. This cost a very reasonable £25 – perhaps a quarter of what a comparable journey across the UK would cost.

Ben had booked a very comfortable twin room in a guest house in the city centre – giving us easy access to Kraków's main attractions.

But we had decided the previous evening to leave exploring Kraków until the second day. Today we would be visiting one of the world's most infamous and haunting locations: Auschwitz.

Few will be unaware of the atrocities that took place here and in the other two connected camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau (camp 2) and Auschwitz camp 3. An estimated 1.1 million people were killed by lethal gassing and other executions, disease and starvation. The figures are almost too much to comprehend.

Most of those killed were Jewish, but the camp also claimed the lives of gypsies, Roma, homosexuals, Soviet troops, disabled people – and numerous other groups that did not fit in with the Nazi idea of an Aryan race or their political or military ambitions.

Both Ben and I were keen to see this camp – and to try and understand one of the most senseless acts in human history – the Holocaust.

We took one of the many buses to the camp (14 zloties each way), which the hotel manager assured us were quicker and easier than going by train (he said the railway station is a long way from the camp).

We decided against a tour guide as we wanted to walk around at our own pace – we both agreed there was more freedom in the experience this way.

We arrived at Auschwitz I and saw the famous metal 'Arbeit Macht Frei' (‘Work Brings Freedom' ) sign above the main gate, before entering the main compound. We thought it strange that some people had their pictures taken under this sign – as if it were the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben, and not one of the most notorious concentration camps in history.

(Petit Group/Bigstock.com)

Inside it was hard to imagine what had taken place here over 70 years ago. But we both went off in our own directions to try and understand.

I noted the hap-hazard way the brick buildings had been constructed; the rough cement looked as if it had been applied by truly exhausted, demoralised people.

I found it hard to believe that these atrocities occurred on the very ground I was standing on. That the 'Wall of Death' was the actual place where so many were summarily executed, that the gas chambers saw so much pain.

The huge piles of the victims' possessions were hugely moving too. Thousands of spectacles, thousands of shoes, thousands of suitcases. The latter pile I found very sad because in many cases the names of the former owners were still visible, on tags or on the suitcases themselves.

The hopelessness of such a situation is hard to fathom, as is the cruelty which was administered day after day, year after year.

By the end of the experience, both myself and Ben were subdued – and yet we both felt in a way disconnected from what happened here. Of course, a lot of time has passed, but one imagines that one might be more struck by it.

However, we both found that in the hours and even days afterwards, the experience of visiting Auschwitz somehow deepened; the full horror of such an event takes some time to process.

Visiting this camp is a sobering experience, but while the term 'must visit' is used a lot in travel writing, perhaps Auschwitz really is an essential part of any visit to Poland.

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