Auschwitz/Birkenau

Due to a request, I apparantly do need to say more about Auschwitz and Birkenau.

Auschwitz was actually smaller than I thought it would be. Seeing the gates for the first time was ver eerie. To me, that was the symbol of the Holocaust. Once through the gates, there were the barracks. Inside the barracks, there was an exhibit about Auschwitz. There were rooms filled with confiscated items like suitcases, brushes, shoes, prosthetic legs, and hair. The gas chamber was really creepy. Auschwitz only has one gas chamber because the camp was to small and the chamber was too close to the barracks so the other prisoners could hear them screaming. The gas chamber was unlike the others because it doesn't have the pretense of a shower. It is simply a room that they shove prisoners togethr and kill them. I lit a candle and said the Kaddish in the chamber before we left.

Birkenau was completely different. It was huge and had the railroad tracks running through the center. The barracks there were creepier than at Auschwitz because they weren't reconstructed and they were rock and concrete. Birkenau was a place people went to die so the living space didn't have to be decent at all. The gas chambers were destroyed but a memorial remains. Some of the barracks were destroyed and we found silverwear and cracked mugs in the ruins. I lit a candle and said the Kaddish by the gas chamber and crematorium ruins in Birkenau.

May 31, 2009-Munich Day 2

Today is our last full day in Europe! We went to the Neuschwanstein Castle. King Ludwig II started building the castle in 1872. Unfortunately, he died in 1889 at a very young age and the castle was never finished. He only lived in the castle for 172 days before his death. Is death is a mystery. One day, his psychiatrist told him that he had a mental illness and was unfit to run the Kingdom of Bavaria. The next morning, both Ludwig II and his psychiatrist were found dead in the nearby lake. The castle was decorated very elaborately and expensively. Each room had a theme that was the story of one of Wagner's operas. The rooms also had a very religious theme as well. The castle is the model that Walt Disney used for the signature Disney Castle. There were swans everywhere because Ludwig II was apparantly very fond of them. It was the most detailed castle I have ever seen.
Later, we drove to Dachau. Dachau was different from the other concentration camps because it was originally set up to be a prison. It as the first concentration camp and was built in 1933. Because it was set up to be a prison, the gas chamber wasn't added to the camp until after the Wansee Conference. While killings were common, they weren't the purpose of the camp. People survived from its conception until 1945 because of this. However, like the rest of the camps, they were evacuated and people were executed all over the place... then typhus broke out (which is why everyone looked so emanciated)... One unique thing I learned about Dachau which differs from the other camps is how the prisoners related to each other. They helped each other and risked beatings and murder. The formed social networks and conversed about things outside the camp. This made them stronger in my opinion and kept their humanity. When the camp was liberated, they found box cars full of bodies who had been left to die. When the prisoners finally realized they were free, they tore the Kapos apart with their bare hands. (For those who don't know, Kapos were prisoners who were in charge of the other prisoners. They enforced the rules with brutal punishments and were treated better than regular prisoners.) After Dachau, we went back to the city center of Munich for dinner.

May 30, 2009-Nuremurg and Munich Day 1

After only one night in Linz, where Hitler grew up, we left for Nuremurg. We went to the location of the Nuremburg Trials where they tried numerous Nazis in high ranks for the crimes they commited during the Holocaust. We learned a lot about the political aspects that occured during the war and how the Third Reich got started. After the audio tour of the museum and looking at the unfinished buildings, we took a walk around the lake to Hitler's stadium wherehe gave speeches and hopped on the bus to head to Munich. After we checked into the hotel, we just chilled there because we had to wake up at 5:30 the next day.

May 29, 2009-Mauthausen/Linz

Today, we woke up really early to hop on a bus to Austria. We stopped for lunch along the way and finally made it to Mauthausen. The concentration camp looked like a fortress. The main gate was huge and made of stone. When we walked in we saw another similar gate leading to the barracks and other buildings. The barracks were as I expected, nothing too special although nicer than Birkenau's. Then we went to the gas chamber and S.S. headquarters. There was an exhibit about other camps in the headquarters and underneath were ovens and the gas chamber. At the ovens, there were numerous plaques and flowers in memory of those lost. The gas chamber was really eerie because it looked so similar to a shower and it was actually quite small. Mathausen wasn't originally created as a death camp so the gas chamber was added later and was used for punishment and not for mass killings. Right outside the gas chamber is a dissection room where doctors can examine the bodies and do tests on them. Then there were the Spanish steps. Originally, the camp was for Spanish prisoners of war but once WWII broke out, they decided to use it for Jews and everyone else as well so they made the Spanish prisoners build a huge set of stairs leading into the quarry and the rest of the buildings in the camp. Throughout the years it was used during the Holocaust, the prisoners who inhabited it were forced to go into thr quarry and bring rocks back up. Now, you might not think that this is such a hard feat but trust me, I walked down those steps today and I almost fell with every step. The steps are uneven and very thin. Imagine that with enormous rocks and 200 other people crowded around you. Essentially, they were working these people to death and many of them fell down the steps to their deaths. Mauthausen was technically a labor camp but because they were using labor as a form of murder, most of the prisoners were killed. There is at least ten different memorials at Mauthausen and one in particular caught my eye. It was a huge statue of barbed wire. What made it interesting was that behind it, there was the gorgeous countryside and the Alps. When you look through to the countryside, you get the feel of a prisoner trapped inside the camp. After we left Mauthausen, we checked into our hotel and Joy and I went to a grocery store to get breakfast and lunch for tomorrow. Then, the group ate Wiener Schnitzel (sp?) at the hotel and called it a night.

May 28, 2009- Prague Day 2

Free day in Prague! Joy and I slept in a little bit then went downtown. It was really interesting to see us trying to figure out the Czech public transportation but we made it. We walked around and shopped a little bit. Then, we found the Jewish Quarter and went to the Old-New Synogogue and ate lunch in a nice Jewish Deli. We met up with the rest of the group at the astronomical clock and went to Prague's annual Beer Fest. Then we called it a night in order to wake up at 6 AM for the four hour bus ride.

May 27, 2009- Prague official Day 1

Today we woke up and took a three hour walking tour of Prague. We went to the Prague Castle and the city center. After that we had free time so Joy and I walked around and did some shopping and more sightseeing. At 5 o'clock, we went on a boat tour of Prague. The view from the river is unbeatable and the buffet had great Czech food. Once that was over, we went back to the hotel and got some sleep.

May 26, 2009- Bus to Prague

We took a 7 hour bus ride to Prague. The ride was uneventful but we stopped in Brno for lunch. Joy and I went to a cafe abd pointed at the cheapest thing on the menu since the waitress spoke no english. Somehow we got two different meals even though we ordered the same thing. Once in Prague, we checked into the hotel, ate dinner and went out to explore downtown.