Today started cool enough but gradually got hotter as the day progressed. This was to be a very interesting day as I was to take Thom (the new way our son Thomas now likes to be known) on an excursion outside Krakow with the same organisation as had taken us on the Schindler's List walking tour yesterday - "Escape2Poland". Our destination was the small Polish industrial town of Oswiecim, better known in the west by its German name - Auschwitz. A smart mini-bus turned up outside our hotel a little after 9 a.m. and we joined about another dozen people on this trip. From our air-conditioned bus we enjoyed the rich Polish countryside which isn't at all unlike the countryside in Wiltshire - many trees and farmland. After about an hour I spotted the tall twin chimneys at the industrial complex once run by I G Farben where the Nazis had sited the slave work camp at Monowitz (or Auschwitz III). Nothing now remains of that camp and the former site is now occupied by residential housing. After driving past the main railway station we eventually pulled up outside Auschwitz I (the main camp). I was amazed at the number of coaches and people. Quite clearly, this had become a major tourist site since my last visit here in the 1980s when Poland had been under a Communist regime. We were met by our guide who took us round in a very comprehensive and professional way and we visited all the parts of the complex I had seen on my previous visit. The difference was that my visit in 1986 had been quite "raw" and now was a very sleek presentation. For me, Auschwitz I has been sanitised and turned from a memorial to the dead to a museum. The stories of horror are no less real but I didn't have three nights of nightmares like last time. Crematorium I has changed in that in the 1980s one walked through and stood in the gas chamber - now you see it beyond a rope. After a short lunch break we set off the two miles by bus to Auschwitz II (Birkenau) which for me was far more chilling. "Hell's Gate" remains intact - that icon of terror which, until this moment, I had only ever seen in monochrome pictures. Now it stood before us in all its horror. A chilling vista. We walked up to the top of the watch tower and surveyed the site - much larger than I had imagined - and Thom and I walked along the railway tracks where once hundreds of "transports" had arrived - their human cargo being selected for work or death on the Selection Ramp. From the Ramp we walked to the left and along to Crematorium II - a 5-6 minutes walk which, for literally hundreds of thousands, had been their last walk on this earth. We viewed the Holocaust Memorial at the end of the railway tracks and stood in silence around the remains of Crematorium II. We were encouraged to read a book written by a Jewish doctor who had been forced to work in this building - Miklos Nyiszli - and I acquired a copy before leaving the camp. Many are the pages written about the horrors that occurred in this place and I do not intend to repeat them, but that 6 minutes walk, the vastness of the camp and seeing Hell's Gate for real left me feeling very sad indeed. Most of us returned to Krakow in silence. This evening Thom and I decided to enjoy a lavish meal at one of the many grill restaurants in the main square. Despite three courses and wine and beer, the bill came to less than £40 for both of us. We returned back to the hotel fairly early and did some advanced packing for our trip back to the UK tomorrow.
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