Do you remember that last time I was telling you about this place that you couldn’t miss? Well, I was talking about Auschwitz. A place that everybody should go visit at least once in their life, in my opinion. There are many other camps around Europe but Auschwitz, Auschwitz is something else.

I’m just going to tell you why it’s important to me. This place and Poland have a special meaning for me. You probably don’t know, and why should you if I never told you before, but part of my family was Polish. My great grandfather left his small town, Pińczów, in 1927, after it was destroyed during WWI, looking for a better future for his family. He found that chance in Argentina (don’t asked me how he found it there). In 1928, my great grandmother and their first child left as well to join my great grandpa in Buenos Aires. They lived the rest of their lives in Argentina where they raised 5 incredible children, a bunch of grandchildren and some great grandkids that were lucky to meet them. Unfortunately they passed away before I was born.

My great grandparents were some of the “lucky ones”, they managed to leave Poland before WWII.  Even though I’m Catholic, my great grandparents were Jews from the south of Poland, so we can all imagine what would have happened if they had stayed (especially considering that they lived just kilometres away from Krakow). We don’t know much about the faith of the rest of the family, there is only person that we do know that survived. It was my great grandma’s younger brother, Abraham, he reached my great grandma around 1960 something when he heard that he had some relatives in Argentina. He was sent to a camp but managed to escape to the USA and later on moved to Israel where he raised his family. They actually managed to meet once again, recognising each other at the airport even though they haven’t seen each other in 40 years!!! Sounds like a story from a movie or something.

I’m the first one in my family, in almost 90 years, to go back to Poland, so you can imagine how important this was for them. My great grandparents could never come back but at least I can do it for them. Next time, with more time, I need to go visit their home town.

Sorry for the long introduction but I just wanted to give you a better picture. But now, let me tell you how my day went.

I woke up super early and went to the main bus station. I was trying to avoid the crowd and tour groups. From Krakow bus station you have a lot of mini buses going to Auschwitz or you can take the train if you prefer. Depending on which mini bus you take, the ride takes between an hour to an hour and a half.

You get there, most of the mini buses drop you at the back, so you simply walk less than 5 minutes and you are at the front next to a huge parking lot where all the tour buses stop.

The entrance is free, so you can go in and spend as much time as you want in there. But first go to the ticket office and get your ticket, you just need to say that you want to do it on your own and they will give you a little paper ticket for you to get in. If you want to go with a guide just tell them and they will assign you a group in the language that you request.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you can only carry the smallest bag in the universe, so only bring money, documents and your camera. To be fair you don’t really need anything else.

I queued for like 10 minutes and I got in, I bought a little guide book (5 zl) that explains the history and the most important places, so that I could have some sort of idea of what was going on.

First thing that I found out (I actually found out the day before) is that there are 2 Auschwitz. Auschwitz I, the first one built, and Auschwitz II – Birkenau, that is the one that you’ve probably seen pictures of.

In Auschwitz I its not what I had pictured in my head. You have a lot of buildings that don’t say much, they look simple. Well, of course you have the wired fences and the watch towers EVERYWHERE, so you know it’s not a simple, free, recreational place. You can also find the first gas chamber, the first place where they “tried” this new method of getting rid of people, and the crematorium, where they made them disappear.

In some of these block buildings they used to keep people. Whoever was in the camp was supposed to work, some of them worked helping to build Auschwitz II. Also here you had the “hospital” where they used to do their experiments on people, as if they were some kind of aliens. On the inside we all look the same.

At the moment, most of these buildings are used as exhibition galleries for ALL the people killed in the camps. Even though 90% were Jews from all around Europe (Dutch, Italians, French, Romanian, Hungarian), there were also Poles, Romani and Sinti (gypsies) as well as Soviet soldiers.

They sent people from all around Europe to Auschwitz and they now each have a block where they are being remembered.

In some blocks they show the living conditions, they just were piled up one on top of the other. In others they show different elements confiscated from the people when they first arrived like glasses, shoes, dolls, pots and pans, hair (they kept women’s hair!!). It is impossible for me to describe how many people were taken to this place, you know you’ve heard it, but still is hard to get that number in your head, there were just SO MANY, all until you see the shoes, the amount of shoes, it’s shocking, it’s unbelievable.

After checking everything, it took me a couple of hours, I took my time to take in all of it. I went back to the parking lot where I took the free bus that takes you to Birkenau just a short drive (3km). During the ride the only thing I kept thinking was that they had to go do this journey EVERYDAY, walking so as to build the place that they knew it was worse than the previous one.

Once you arrive you see it, you see the size of this place, of this prison. Not all buildings are standing, the Nazis tried to erase the evidence of what they’d done, but you can still see the foundation of where they were standing.

I took my time here, you can’t get inside many places but there is a lot to see. Just to imagine, no actually there is not a chance I can get even close to what it was, what they went through, summer, winter, the cold, the hunger, the aching, days, years. WOW! Just WOW.

Over here they had 4/5 gas chambers and crematoriums, it was just indescribable. Once they “tried” their little project in Auschwitz I they decided to do it in bigger scale in Auschwitz II. Once again, the Nazis tried to cover it up and destroyed them pretending that nothing happened.

The thing is now, when I see it in a hot summer day with the infinite blue sky and the green grass and the lavender flowers and the woods in the background, its hard to understand how such a place that looks so beautiful now could, once, be where so much pain, suffering and horror happened, not so long ago.

I thought I was going to get upset and sad but I just felt angry, angry because these people didn’t do anything wrong, they didn’t deserve to go through all this, they had their future taken away and because of wars like this the whole history changed. People that would have never left their country migrated just to survive and an entire new story was written.

It’s a place to go so that we don’t forget, a place to remember because THIS should never EVER happen again.