Auschwitz

Click image for more photos ...

Kate's annual KBS conference was in Krakow, Poland in June of 2003. I had a lot of time to explore the city but I also took the time one sunny day, with some friends, to go out of the city by train to visit the Auschwitz Concentration Camp at nearby Oświęcim. That's about 50km to the southwest from Krakow so it's only a short train ride.

This is the main camp of several (Birkenau is another famous nearby camp that's part of it) and this is a huge place — an industrialized "final solution".

There's the famous entrance gate with the sadly ironic motto "Arbeit macht frei sign" (translated as "work sets you free"). Inside the buildings there's exhibits to display photos of the victims and their modest belongings. What brought me to tears was the piles of luggage where each had a return address painted on by the poor soul who thought they might return.

You will have heard of at least one of the 6,000,000 who perished in the Holocaust. Anne Frank and the other seven were transported here from the secret annex in Amsterdam on 3 September 1944. All perished except for her father Otto who lived to publish her famous diary. See more at the Anne Frank House Museum.

From Wikipedia:

"The International Holocaust Remembrance Day, or the International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, is an international memorial day on 27 January that commemorates the victims of the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of one third of the Jewish people, along with countless members of other minorities between 1933 and 1945 by Nazi Germany, an attempt to implement their "final solution" to the Jewish question. 27 January was chosen to commemorate the date that Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by the Red Army in 1945."  

The photo album, not for the faint of heart, has pictures of the gas chamber and the ovens used to burn the bodies of those who were killed there. For those who would deny the Holocaust I invite you take a trip to Auschwitz near Oświęcim.

These notes and photos were composed and scanned during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020/21 from slides taken in June of 2003.