Poland Day 9 - Shock and Awe and Little People

5 o'clock came early this morning (well that's a redundant statement, isn't it), with our wakeup calls to start the next leg of our journey to the town of Oswiecim.  That is the town that during WWII, came to be known by it's now infamous name, Auschwitz.
I learned a few things today.

  First I learned that despite having seen many photos, books, movies and documentaries on the topic,  I wasn't quite prepared for the scale of the camps we toured.
  I also learned that Auschwitz was actually a series of camps, with Auschwitz II, more famously known as Birkenau located about 3 kilometres down the road near the village of Brzezinka. Auschwitz was the original housing up to 15,000 prisoners. But Birkenau was the largest, housing anywhere between 80,000 and 120,000 prisoners at any one time.
 
There was far too much information provided to even begin to paraphrase here. And there were a couple of displays that although not terrible to see, just seemed a little too personal for me to  photograph. Piles of personal belongings, shoes and hair, which were all destined to be reused for "the cause".

The first five photos are the original Auschwitz, which had previously been a Polish army barracks, minus the barbed wire and second stories on the barracks (which the prisoners built), when the Germans took over. This camp is mostly intact.

A view from outside the wire at Birkenau. The majority of buildings here were demolished by the Germans as the Russians approached to liberate the area. This camp must have covered at least ten times the area of the original.

A view of the track and arrival platform, inside the wire at Birkenau.

Remnants of the barracks.

Guard houses every 150 yards.

Although a difficult subject, it's obvious the Poles see the importance of ensuring this story does not get lost in time. I was glad to see group after group after group of teenagers touring and I'm sure getting an up close lesson in a horrific time in Polish and human history.


Meanwhile in Wroclaw...  We checked in to our hotel around 4pm, then did a "walkabout" (lots of Aussies in the group). This first shot just made me think of Matthew and whether we could talk him into trading his Aprilia for this little beauty.

The building centred below is apparently one of very few that survived the war unscathed. 

Just a small portion of the rebuilt town square. Why don't we have town squares like this back home?

A shrine to the protein in our meals.

A few of the more than 350 Gnomes in Wroclaw Poland are pictured below. Originally a symbol of the "Orange Alternative" movement, a peaceful and satirical protest against the communist rule in the 1980's, now as likely as not to be advertising. Remember the moose project in Toronto? However these gnomes are only a foot or so tall.

Tomorrow it's off to Poznan, which is thought to be the birthplace of Poland in the 10th century.