On Thursday, we began the day visiting the Nazi’s best known extermination camp, Auschwitz. Having visited last week Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp outside of Berlin, we thought we knew what to expect. Auschwitz is really three camps that housed over 150,000 inmates and killed over 1.3m people 70 years ago. This unimaginable number of over one million human beings is enough to knock you out. The treatment of these “prisoners” was horrendous and humanity’s worst atrocity. We spent 2 hours at Auschwitz touring the buildings and exhibits. It was so horrific, we will only give you an example of one exhibit; however, there were many other exhibits equally as appalling.
At first we couldn’t quite understand what we were seeing; as, we turned the corner into the darkened room in the barracks. Then it hit us like a bulldozer. Hair. We peered into the massive, room-length display cabinet at the biggest most macabre, most soul-destroying example of human memorabilia we have ever seen. . . . piles and piles of hair-untouched for the better part of 70 years. As the cliche goes, it felt like time stood still. Lesley almost got physically sickened by this viewing. The tour continued much the same way for us. Nothing can prepare you for Auschwitz but everyone should experience it; as, it is literally a life-changing experience.
We spent another hour at Birkenau- the sister death camp 5 times larger than Auschwitz. At the entrance to Birkenau, the infamous watchtower and ominous railway tracks greeted us. It was a grim shlep walking along the railroad tracks. This hell-on-earth place looked never-ending. Auschwitz told the holocaust story in great detail and Birkenau with its size, told the breadth of the atrocities. The living conditions at Birkenau were too bad for animals – let alone humans. One of the hardest hitting thing for us was seeing photos of the “selection process” (only 15% of the victims were selected to “live” (their death only delayed as they labored as slaves) with a thumbs up hand gesture by the Nazi physician) and photos of women and children stripping down getting unknowingly ready to enter the gas chambers. We then saw the exact same location today as where the photos were taken. This was a chilling, haunting experience for us that will be cemented in our memories forever.
On the 1+ hour drive to the Wieliczka Salt Mine, we started reflecting on what we had just seen at Auschwitz and Birkenau. That is when the emotions kicked in and the numbness from the shocking visit wore off. We remained silent for the entire ride to the salt mine.
Wieliczka Salt Mine dates back to the 1300’s and was only closed to mining in 1996 due to low salt prices and mine flooding. It has many interesting features once you descend the 400 wooden steps down a fairly narrow shaft. (Lesley’s claustrophobia did not kick in, thank goodness). During its mining period, the religious miners built 41 chapels within the salt mine – 26 still exist, the others have been destroyed over time by nature. Ignoring the very cheesy dummy miners demonstrating various aspects of the mining operation, the tour was quite interesting. The most fascinating and absolutely spectacular Chapel of St. Kinga within the mine is an active place of worship today. There are weddings and concerts that often take place in this underground cathedral due to its sheer size and audacity. The cathedral can accommodate over 400 individuals. The church took 7 years to build. It was built by 3 miners in their spare time in the 1800’s, an extraordinary feat. The large cavern has extensive carvings of Bible stories on its walls and numerous statues. Even the enormous chandeliers in the cathedral are made of salt! The salt in this mine is as hard as marble but much more fragile which makes the feat that was accomplished even more extraordinary.
It seemed like we walked at least a couple of miles within the mine; but, only one percent of the mine is open to visitors. The therapeutic properties of the salt air within the mine apparently slows down the aging process. We were glad that we finished the day within the salt mine after visiting Auschwitz.
