Auschwitz & Birkenau - Oswiecim, Poland
4 Stars This place was Great visited Aug 25, 2005
A Day Trip I was sort of in two minds about seeing Auscshwitz. On the one hand, I couldn't have missed it, but on the other, it is part of the sort of gruesome, disaster tourism I'm not particularly in favour of. Still, I'm glad I went. It was a beautiful sunny day, with a bright blue sky, which seemed all wrong once we were there. With that and the green grass that is all over the site, it was all way too cheery for the serious nature of the place. While Auschwitz was interesting, with most of the brick cell blocks turned into museums of different aspects of life in the camp, or related things, it was the sister camp, Birkenau, which is a couple of kilometres away that was most thought-provoking. Birkenau was established after auschwitz to accomodate the huge numbers of prisoners that were being brought in towards the end of the war. It is a huge area of shoddy wooden barracks, most of which look more like barns than anything else. It is cut in half by the railway tracks and platforms that were used for unloading and sorting the prisoners. On either side of the end of the tracks are the remains of two of the enormous, purpose built gas chambers. Although we got here quite late in the afternoon, we spent nearly two hours wandering around. Definitely the 'highlight' - if you can call it that - of the day.