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Dear Mirek,

Thanks. Be assured that we are all with you in spirit, and before long we will be there in the flesh also. And, hopefully, once we are all there, the parts will add up to even more than the sum.

Bob (from Ann Arbor, MI, a college town about the same size as the college town of Cracow, if not quite as old--tho maybe we have a better football team!)

I cannot recommend the Salt Mines in Cracow highly enough. Jarkko and Eija recommended them to me and WoW! Once, again, but in a totally different way, it went too fast. INCREDIBLY fascinating story about the two brothers who did all the salt carvings !!! Don't miss this experience. It was just a tad chilly down there. Not bad.


~ Lizzy

Dear Lizzy,

I cannot speak for Greg, of course, but I will ask him when we next speak in a few hours- personally, I want to come with you to Auschwitz-Birkenau by all means. I have been there before, that was three years ago, and the impressions were overwhelming - as it turned out from hindsight, because when I was there, I just felt numb and was afraid I was not feeling "enough". Well, I was, it all caught up with me several days later - and all the stronger!
So, yes, I will definitely join you again, for this time, I might be able to take in aspects and informations I have missed last time - as you have said, there is just so much to see and take in, I even felt that after three days there ... I have some knowledge on the subject of the Holocaust and the extermination camps, but we will be on a guided tour, anyway, as it seems, so I will not be with you "officially" speaking as a historian, but just as another member of the group...

That's very good news, Ann. I hope Greg will agree to it, too. Of course, I know you wouldn't talk concurrently with the guide... yet, there will be other conversations. I would love to have you with us. It was very frustrating for me to have people laughing and talking, as though they'd just stopped somewhere for lunch, on the bus returning to Cracow. I was just very quiet and to myself. For me, it continued to go layers deeper, too. I know what you mean about the numbness sort of feeling. I was numbstruck that I was actually even there, and kept looking at the ground, thinking of the feet that had walked it. At Birkenau, seeing the railroad tracks that brought the people in... and walking up into and being in the watchtower, where the Nazis kept guard, and then walking back down the steps... just very difficult to imagine all that had gone on there. It was at Birkenau, too, that I stopped to pick up a stone to return home with me and, when I looked at what I'd picked up, it was triangular in shape, so it looked like an "A," which I felt was as it should be, reflecting Auschwitz, as well.

At the Event, when we went on the walking tour of Berlin and were shown the spot over the bunker below where Hitler and his wife/lover last stayed before suicide, images of Auschwitz-Birkenau kept recycling. The whole of it was very impacting and overwhelming. I remember the room where the huge pile of human hair is encased behind glass and I could smell it coming from a vented space at the bottom of the glass. I asked the guide if that's what I was smelling and he confirmed it, saying that it's necessary to keep the hair in its original form. I can still bring various images to mind, so clearly, but won't go into them all here. Like many, I'm sure, I feel that any holocaust denier should be made to visit these camps. There is simply and absolutely no denying what happened.

You'll definitely take in more this time. There's too much to take in all at once. Impossible. Impossible. Even after your being there for three days, it's no surprise that you feel you may trying to wrap your mind around things that are impossible to imagine, with everything he says. One after another after another after another.

Any questions you might pose to the guide would be very helpful to everyone. In any case, I would love to have you with us, whether you choose to share any of your own knowledge or not. It would be great if we could rent a small van for the day, so transportation to/from, and between the camps, as well as time schedules, wouldn't be an issue. With my lodging partner off in the mountains of Wales, I haven't coordinated with her on this, but this would make it 7 of us total [that includes you, Carmen].


~ Lizzy

[Edited to make it 7... forgot to include myself in the count ]

Dear Lizzy,

yes, I have taken a stone, too. I have it before me as I am writing to you now, paradoxically, it could be called a beautiful stone - shimmering in the light, it looks innocent enough, but I have picked it up directly from the tracks and keep it on my desk; not as if I was looking at it all the time, but it serves as a reminder.
You know, I don't know whether this makes sense at all - but I had a moment when I really started to grasp the dimensions of all this, and the fact that even today, when you do in fact not see much in Birkenau apart from the few baracks still standing, the ruins of the gas chambers and the birch trees - that wood being a place that could in mere theory even appear to be"pleasant", until you know, of course, that that is where they had shot and burnt large numbers of victims before the gas chambers were built-, there is nothing "normal" about it: I went in spring, and this having been swampland, you will still find large numbers of toads hopping about there. Most of them were swimming in a big pond, and there was a sign next to it. It made me wonder what it was, and I went to have a look, only to find out that it was the pond into which the ashes of the burned from the ovens had been dumped. It came as a huge shock, I wil never forget the moment, it almost made me sick. The thought of the mournful croaking of these toads, a sound that I will never get out of my head completely, still sends shivers down my spine...

Dear Ann ~

Again, you remind me of the constraints of time and the schedules of other entities. I did not see such a pond, and as a matter of wanting to see all that there is to see, as part of the whole, I would like to be able to... like you, I took in the surroundings and the trip out enroute, and the paradox and tragic irony of the peacefulness and beauty of the forested lands and the highway, in the drive to Auschwitz, which I'm sure registered with you, as well. I, personally, would not mind a day for each place... or at least a day at Auschwitz and half a day at Birkenau. Even if going with a guide for the guided portion and then time to circle back through everything on our own, without rushing. All of the rushing was very disconcerting to me.

Yes, I felt compelled to have something as a tangible reminder, too. Interesting that we both chose the same. The whole of the experience came to me in chunks and waves, both while there and since. Each of us have times in history with which we resonate. Perhaps, being half Polish and having someone who knows facial structures telling me I am "Ukrainian" in heritage; always having felt 'gypsy' somewhere in me; having zeroed in on 'the yellow star' at a very young age and buying a book of the same name; and having had 'Nazi' dreams [three that I specifically recall]; the Holocaust has been mine.

I was very upset when they were talking of cutting down the tree that grew outside the attic window, where Anne Frank used to see the sky and branches.


~ Lizzy

Womanfromaroom wrote:I have some knowledge on the subject of the Holocaust and the extermination camps, but we will be on a guided tour, anyway, as it seems, so I will not be with you "officially" speaking as a historian, but just as another member of the group...

I wonder whether you or Lizzy are familiar with the story of one of the bravest men in Polish war history - Witold Pilecki.
His name is strongly connected with Auschwitz concentration camp - I am sure you would be interested to read a bit more about this man.

By the way - maybe we can ask Jarkko to divide this thread and put the Auschwitz part into a separate one. What do you think about that?

Mirek

That sounds fine to me, Mirek, since of course Auschwitz isn't directly related to the Event Registration details, yet is inextricably for me conjured when I think of Cracow. So, a separate thread would be wholly appropriate.

Is this the man who rallied people to hold tight and fight until they end, making clear their will to fight and their honour, even though in the end they were taken? He and the situation were inspirational and spoke strongly to those who would condemn people for just 'allowing themselves to be taken' ~ how easy to stand outside a situation and unfairly judge.



~ Lizzy

I´ve just desided I´m going to make registration on monday I like Krakow, I´ve been there just once, 7 years ago, high time to repeat it
See you

OOhhh, that's wonderful news, Silvinka ! Will your gorgeous son be coming with you?


~ Lizzy

Thank you, Lizzy, for counting me in, as renting a van is a very good idea. It would also give us a certain degree of independence during the Auschwitz-Birkenau tour.

And yes, Mirek, opening another thread for sharing what we know about death camps is a wise decision, thus leaving the Krakow Event thread for info about the event itself, or our proposals related to it.

As for myself, the first time I heard about the death camps was from a TV documentary on Anna Frank, at a time when I was maybe 12 or 13 yrs old, roughly her age. I cried so much, and I was so impressed that there could be people somewhere in this world, that were rejoicing killing children... The other thing that stuck in my mind from that documentary was the yellow star. I later started asking my parents various questions about those moments in history, then discovered the significance of David's star...

For a long time, nobody knew that there were actually a number of people who fought against this inhuman thing. Thank you Mirek for the info about Witold Pilecki, I had never heard this name before, but I accessed the link you gave us and I am glad that you had such a hero.

And I was also impressed by the fact that you, Lizzy, you and your friend, Womanfromaroom, both took a stone from the premises; it reminds me of the last image in Schindler's List (the movie) with hundreds of people placing a stone on the grave of their savior. I have seen that movie maybe seven or eight times, and I still cannot (neither do I want to) hold my tears at that moment...

OMG, Carmen. I have seen Schindler's List only once... many years ago and remember how colour came into the screen at the end and I, too, cried significantly at that point. Deeply moving. I had no memories or thoughts of that scene when I picked up my stone. It happened with only a thought of "I must have something from here... [and, looking down] a stone upon which these people walked." Such symbology there turns out to be.

I have time now to go and read the link that Mirek posted. I remember there being a number of artists and poets who ended up in the death camps, and it seems that the one who led the resistance in that section of the city was one. In any case, I need to know who was Mirek's hero.


~ Lizzy

YES ~ Witold Pilecki is absolutely the man I had in mind!

This kind of thing is heartbreaking beyond measure:

On March 3, 1948, a show trial took place [17]. Testimony against him was presented by a future Polish prime minister, Józef Cyrankiewicz, himself an Auschwitz survivor.

~ Lizzy

Yes, it shocked me too (I must see how quotes work, I couldn't place it here). Desperate for survival yet again, maybe?!?

Mirek's was just a proposal. The thread is not in here yet - but I suggest he places it under Krakow 2010 as well - this way it would be easier to find for whoever is interested in this topic.

I guess there will be a few new threads in this section. There are several things we should discuss. I was also thinking about a kind of Questions&Answers thread, in which anyone could ask some questions concerning information about Krakow, travelling throughout Poland, currency, prices, what to see and/or what to avoid etc.

Mirek