Krakow!
Mood:
Relieved!
I've been in Krakow for a few days now and I love it. It is so good to get away from the drugs and dirtbags of Amsterdam. Just good, clean, cheap living here (as long as you ignore the sometimes awful stench of industrial pollution).
Most important, I saw Aushwitz today. I stood in the same chaber where tens of thousands of prisoners were gassed. I touched the pipes where Zyklon-B was dropped in the chamber. I opened and closed the furnaces where the bodies were cremated. The place was horrible.
Yet, in a strange way, I felt relieved when I went to the larger nearby camp. This was the main home to over 100,000 prisoners and also the basic scene of Schindler's List. All that was left for the most part was ruins - the barracks, the furnaces, the gas chambers were all in total ruins. A few structures survived the war and some had been rebuilt, but seeing this place of terror in ruins was comforting. There were little green frogs in the ponds that were once gas chambers and chromatic buterflies flittering in the flowers outside deserted barracks.
To make the journey complete, I scraped a small splinter from the gallows where the commandant of Aushwitz was hanged in 1947. They made a special gallows for him in the same place where prisoners were tortired foe engaging in conspiricies against the guards. I guess I took it as a little symbol of justice. Poetic Justice, you might say.
To end on a lighter note, I saw a t-shirt today that said the following:
KEEP JOY FOUL IN YOUR HEART
Most important, I saw Aushwitz today. I stood in the same chaber where tens of thousands of prisoners were gassed. I touched the pipes where Zyklon-B was dropped in the chamber. I opened and closed the furnaces where the bodies were cremated. The place was horrible.
Yet, in a strange way, I felt relieved when I went to the larger nearby camp. This was the main home to over 100,000 prisoners and also the basic scene of Schindler's List. All that was left for the most part was ruins - the barracks, the furnaces, the gas chambers were all in total ruins. A few structures survived the war and some had been rebuilt, but seeing this place of terror in ruins was comforting. There were little green frogs in the ponds that were once gas chambers and chromatic buterflies flittering in the flowers outside deserted barracks.
To make the journey complete, I scraped a small splinter from the gallows where the commandant of Aushwitz was hanged in 1947. They made a special gallows for him in the same place where prisoners were tortired foe engaging in conspiricies against the guards. I guess I took it as a little symbol of justice. Poetic Justice, you might say.
To end on a lighter note, I saw a t-shirt today that said the following:
KEEP JOY FOUL IN YOUR HEART
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