Woke up early as we knew making a trip to Auschwitz would be quite the trek and full-day ordeal. At breakfast a nice man started chatting with Jennifer about Teah and mentioned how today was going to be “another hot one like yesterday.” This encouraged us to keep moving quickly as we didn’t want to be running through the tour in a blistering heat wave. Sam had to regulate Polish style with some local trying to cut in line as we were boarding the mini-bus to Oswiecim (the town where Auschwitz is located). In order to ensure that Sam didn’t spend the day in jail a couple of friendly local students intervened and helped by heckling the man about how he was acting out of line (pun intended). Along the ride we met a kind Canadian high-school principal who we befriended for the day. Little did we know at the time, but our new acquaintance would later become the hero of our trip to date.
We were able to hop aboard a guided tour minutes after arrival and immediately were impressed with the wealth of information and passion our guide had relative to Auschwitz and all matters regarding World War II (particularly the Holocaust). Sam being the econ major versus Jen the history buff, was pretty ignorant on who Hitler was let alone what all occurred at Auschwitz. Therefore, learning that Auschwitz was the largest concentration and mass extermination camp of the Nazi Germans as well as a compound for torture, human experimentation, and a source of slave labor made the historical significance of our visit even more surreal. 
While Auschwitz consisted of some 48 camps, there were three main camps known as Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II–Birkenau, and Auschwitz III-Monowitz. Auschwitz I served as a Polish Army artillery barrack before being taken over by the Nazi’s to become their initial Auschwitz camp and later the administrative facility of all 48 sites. The site was also home to the medical experimentation facilities and the execution of approximately 70,000 people, mostly ethnic poles and Soviet prisoners of war. Birkenau was a mass extermination camp where the Nazi’s executed over a million people, 90% of which were jews. Monowitz served as a labor camp and wasn’t part of our tour as Auschwitz I and Birkenau are the most historically significant sites.
The map to the left illustrates where the majority of the 1.3 million prisoners of Auschwitz between 1940-1945 were being shipped from by the Nazi Germans. These prisoners were originally told that they should pack up what they could carry and go buy their own train ticket as they would be moving east to start a new life. Little did they know at the time that the ticket they purchased was essentially a death ride to the gas chamber. Nearly all the Nazi’s actions were to manipulate the people and disguise their objectives as they tried to make their actions as subtle as possible to prevent chaos from the masses.
In addition to the “moving east strategy,” the welcoming sign at the gates of the camp stated “Arbeit macht frei” as you walked in which translates “Work makes free.” This of course was untrue and served more as a joke to the prisoners as they entered the camp. Shortly after arriving to Auschwitz, the thousands of people probably realized this wasn’t the new life they were led to believe as the camp was fortified with a double row of electric fences and their belongings taken, hair shaved, photos taken, and were immediately separated between those that were valuable to the Nazi’s (i.e. could do slave labor) and those that were worthless and would be put to death quickly. Unfortunately, those who were found least valuable were the elderly, women, and of course the children including infants.
German soldiers left nothing to waste as they pillaged through prisoners items sending most away by train to Nazi factories and kept some of the items at Auschwitz in huge warehouses. These pictures illustrate a small fraction of the items including tens of thousands of pairs of shoes and a stockpile of artificial limbs and hands that were confiscated immediately upon checking in at the camp. To further exemplify how resourceful the Nazi’s were, we walked a room with a couple of tons of prisoner hair piled ten feet high that was used in textile manufacturing.
In addition to the gas chamber (the primary method of Nazi mass killing as it was the least expensive and most efficient), the Nazi’s used numerous means to execute their prisoners. We visited the basement of Block 11 at Auschwitz that became known as the prison within the prison. Here there were cells specifically constructed to eradicate prisoners via suffocation or starvation. The worst method though was the sixteen square foot “standing cells” in which guards would pile four prisoners into a room forcing them to stand through the night. In the morning when the door opened the prisoners who were still alive would be forced to work hard labor for the next eleven hours before returning back to the cell for the evening. This would continue until the prisoner would die anywhere from one day to maybe a couple weeks if they were really unlucky. Below is a picture of the firing squad wall between Blocks 10 and 11 where the soldiers would have the prisoners undress and face the wall before being shot in the back of the head. The above picture shows the black horizontal “I” beam that would be used to hang soldiers.
Those prisoners who were not killed or forced into slave labor were often used as guinea pigs for the Nazi German medical doctors. Examples of some of the experiments performed by these “medical doctors” included injecting chemicals into women’s uteruses in an effort to glue them shut, various forms of sterilization techniques on men, and taking twins and injecting a disease in one and killing the second as soon as the first passed to perform identical autopsies.
Visiting the gas chambers was one of the eeriest parts of our tour. The first one we walked through was built in 1941 and could fit around 700 people (pic to the left). Passing through this section gave us chills and brought awe to the group out of disbelief that anyone could put another human being through this facility. Still more appalling was that this gas chamber wasn’t big enough for the Nazi’s plans and larger gas chambers were built at Auschwitz II-Birkenau to kill thousands of people at a time. It is so sad to think of the thousands of prisoners who filed into line thinking they were taking a regular shower. They would undress either outside or in a small open room and then walk into a subterranean warehouse that had actual showerheads to give the impression of a shower room, preventing any panic or distress. These showerheads actually served as chimneys as the guards on the roof would drop down Cyclone B into the vault. The body heat from the prisoners standing squished like cattle would set the chemical off and it would only take as little as little as 5-6 cans of Cyclone B to kill thousands of prisoners at a time. Appointed Jews would then have to remove gold teeth from the dead prior to pulling the thousands of bodies to the crematory next door. (picture of a gas chamber model where prisoners wait in line to “take a shower” and then walk inside to undress before reaching the shower room where they are gassed to death. Other pictures shows a can of Cyclone B and a crematory in the original gas chamber). 
Some interesting tidbits of information that our guide offered was that Hitler never visited any of the Auschwitz death camps. He merely sent Himmler, a leading Nazi officer, to oversee the happenings of these locations and ensure their progress. Also, our guide let us know that of the one million plus people imprisoned and killed at this facility, historical records show that very few attempted to escape. One way that the guards prevented escapes was by threatening prisoners that for every one person who tried to escape, they would pick ten at random from the escapees block and starve them to death. Therefore, only about 800 attempted to escape of which 150 succeeded (most of which were Polish as they knew the native language and were familiar with the land).
Our tour around Auschwitz I lasted about 2 hours and after a small break, we jumped aboard a bus to visit Aushwitz II- Birkenau only a couple of kilometers away. We were taken aback immediately upon arrival at the immense size of this camp and even though most of it was bombed, there were still some structures standing that provide a glimpse into the life of the prisoners. For example, the building with the toilets presented the harsh reality that each prisoner would have 30 seconds to perform their business (with no toilet paper, soap, or anything) before being rushed out for another group of prisoners to use the room. The next structure we entered was for housing and contained the bunk beds where prisoners would sleep after 11 hours of manual labor. The prisoners would sleep ten to a bed on 3-tiered bunk beds that were no bigger than a bed that nowadays many people use for two people. Walking these accommodations left a lasting impression on how miserable life must have been for the prisoners. It is amazing how the prisoners were able to even survive the extreme cold and hot weather with all of the overcrowding, sanitation issues, harsh manual labor, and no more than 1,500 calories a day (on average only enough to sustain prison life for an average of 3-months before death from malnutrition). 
During our tour at Birkenau the weather took a quick change and it started pouring on us cats and dogs!!! So much for the morning weather report from Johnny Mountain in the elevator this morning. Luckily the Canadian man we had befriended on the bus from Krakow saved us as he let us use his umbrella. He probably cared little about our need for being dry, especially after being irresponsible and not having an umbrella for our little one, but he wanted to make sure that Teah was protected. He was definitely the hero of our trip! After taking cover under the umbrella we ended the tour by walking over to the largest gas chamber that is now in shambles.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau tour took up most of our day, but was well worth it as it reminded us of the strength and courage that the prisoners of this camp displayed. It left us with a life-long impression of the cruelties of the Nazis during WWII and reminded us how lucky we are to be healthy and living a happy life with our wonderful friends and family.
We ended the night by going to a restaurant in Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarters where our hotel is located. We ate at a Jewish restaurant and were pleased by the traditional Polish stew, dumplings, and a Jewish roast beef with latkes (potato pancakes). With our stomachs full of hearty food, we walked around the neighborhood to enjoy the cool weather and stopped at a nice little café on our way home for a cappuccino and some carrot cake.
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