Category:

A Never to be Forgotten Visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau

1/31/2016

I had to give this article a lot of thought before posting, because after our visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau outside of Krakow, Poland, I was filled with emotion, and now a few months later, I hesitated to show these photos, which still bring tears to my eyes and are a reminder of the tragic reality of suffering that went on in this famous death camp.

The piles of personal items and the gaze of prisoner photos bearing witness are particularly disturbing.

“Auschwitz” was actually a network of German Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Poland areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the original camp, Auschwitz II–Birkenau, a combination concentration-extermination camp, Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp to staff a Nazi factory, and 48 satellite camps.

Auschwitz I was first constructed to hold Polish political prisoners, who began to arrive in June 1940. The first extermination of prisoners took place in September 1941, and Auschwitz II–Birkenau went on to become a major site of the Nazi "Final Solution”.

From early 1942 until late 1944, transport trains delivered Jews to the camp's gas chambers from all over German-occupied Europe, where they were killed with the pesticide Zyklon B. At least 1.1 million prisoners died at Auschwitz, around 90 percent of them Jewish. Others deported to Auschwitz included Poles, Gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war and Jehovah’s Witnesses along with many considered by the Nazis to be “undesirable” by virtue of health, ethnicity, cultural or sexual preference, or religion.

Many of those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced labor, infectious diseases, individual executions, and medical experiments.

There are very few people who don’t know the horrific story of Auschwitz-Birkenau. For this reason, I won’t be writing more than this introduction.

The photos speak for themselves.

Auschwitz

Birkenau

Click here to learn more about visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau

Comments

Learning About Poland's Jewish History in the Kazimierz District of Krakow

1/9/2016

Comments

One of the best ways to see a city is on a guided electric-car tour, and there are many to chose from. They are strategically located all around the old-town of Krakow. We chose to use City Tour to get an up-close view of Krakow. The tour is conducted via multi-seating electric carts but as it turned out, we were the only people on board so it felt like a private tour. The market squares of Europe’s old cities are always amazingly beautiful, but there are always other interesting districts to see also and you shouldn’t miss them.

All of the electric-car tour companies offer a variety of city itineraries but we had already walked much of the old-town, so we chose to venture further out and take a tour of the Kazimierz District (Jewish Historic District) and the WWII Krakow ghetto.

Krakow is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. It grew from a Stone Age settlement into Poland's second most important city. The city dates back to the 7th century and Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centers of Polish economic, academic, cultural, and artistic life. It began as a hamlet on Wawel Hill (location of the royal castle) and was already being reported as a busy trading center of “Slavonic Europe” by 965 a.d. The city is situated on the Vistula River in the “Lesser Poland” region and was the capital of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland from 1038 to 1569. It continued to be a seat of Polish government for centuries.

As we left the beautifully restored center, we found streets filled with every-day shops, cafes, churches and businesses you would find in any neighborhood though many of the buildings had picturesque Bell-Époque facades above the store-fronts adding a venere of beauty to the every-day street scene.

We were struck by the occasional facade that remained obviously unrestored or patched-up ever since WWII. You couldn't help but be reminded of the difficulties and challenges Poland has faced from the end of WWII through the present.

We were welcomed by a busy flea-market as we entered the old neighborhood called the Kazimierz District.

Jews had played an important role in the Kraków regional economy since the end of the 13th century, and they were granted the freedom of worship, trade and travel by Boleslaw the Pious in his General Charter of Jewish Liberties issued in 1264. The Jewish community in Kraków lived undisturbed alongside their Christian neighbors under the protective King Kazimierz III, the last king of the Piast dynasty.

According to general historic record, in 1495, King Jan I Olbracht moved the Krakow Jewish community to the nearby royal city of Kazimierz, which gave rise to a bustling Jewish quarter and a major European center of the Diaspora for the next three centuries. With time it turned into virtually separate and self-governed 34-acre Jewish Town, considered a model for every East European shtetl, within the limits of the gentile city of Kazimierz.

As refugees from all over Europe came to find the safe haven in the Jewish quarter, its population reached 4,500 by 1630. The Jewish leaders petitioned to build walls enclosing their community which was granted and the “Oppidum” Jewish Town, became the main spiritual and cultural center of Polish Jewry, hosting many of Poland’s finest Jewish scholars, artists and craftsmen.

This golden age came to an end in 1782 under Austrian Emperor Joseph II. In 1791, Kazimierz lost its status as a separate city and became a district of Kraków and in 1822, the walls were torn down, removing any physical reminder of the old borders between Jewish and Christian Kazimierz.

Several historic civic and religious sites from this period still exist in Kazimierz.

Former Kazimierz Town Hall originally built in the Plac Wolnica (town square) in the 15th century. The Bell Tower remains from the 15th century. The remaining façade of the building is from the 16th century and designed in the Renaissance style. It is now the Museum of Ethnology.

The Corpus Christi Basilica (Bazylika Bożego Ciała in Polish), located in the old Christian district of Kazimierz is a Gothic church founded by King Kasimir III the Great in 1335.

The High Synagogue (Synagoga Wysoka or Nowa Boznica) is a late Gothic building where the upper floor was turned into a public place of worship in 1563. Everyday secular life went on downstairs. The only original parts remaining from the historic synagogue are the façade with its Renaissance portal, and the remnants of an Aron Hakodesh in the former men’s prayer hall. The building now houses a photography exhibition called ‘Two Faces of the Cracow Jews’ that shows the city’s prewar Jewish community.

Poland’s oldest synagogue “Stara Boznica” was built in the early 16th century next to the 14th-century city walls. It was destroyed by fire in 1557, and the exterior of the brick building was restored in the Renaissance style. The interior is basically Gothic. The Nazis damaged the synagogue and turned to a warehouse, they also executed 30 Polish hostages at its wall in 1943. The synagogue was restored in 1955-1957. Since 1961 the Old Synagogue has served as a museum of Jewish history, culture, and tradition.

Isaac’s Synagogue (Synagoga Izaaka or Boznica Ajzyka) was funded by a local banker Isaac reb Yekele. The baroque structure was built in 1644. It was refurbished in 1857 and was again damaged by the Nazis during German occupation of Krakow in the WWII. The synagogue was reconstructed in the 1970s and the 1980s. It now houses a video-and-photography show titled ‘In Memory of Polish Jews’.

Synagoga Remuh is the smallest of the Kazimierz synagogues. The Renaissance building was erected in 1558 beside the Jewish cemetery of the same name which was established in 1533 and closed in 1800. The name commemorates rabbi Moses Isserles Auerbach (born circa 1520, died 1572) a.k.a. Remuh (RaMa), who was a religious writer-philosopher of international fame and son of the synagogue’s founder.

His tomb is located in the adjacent Remuh Cemetery. The synagogue and the cemetery, were both devastated under the Nazi rule. They were restored in stages from 1956-1968. The synagogue is the venue for religious services for orthodox Jews in Krakow. The interior boasts its original Aron Hakodesh, a Renaissance stone cabinet for the Torah.

The Remuh Cemetery, also known as the Old Jewish Cemetery of Kraków, is an inactive Jewish historic cemetery established in 1535. The New Jewish Cemetery was founded in 1800 on grounds purchased by the Jewish Qahal from the Augustinian Order. It was enlarged in 1836 with additional land purchased from the monks. The cemeteries hold the grave sites of many notable Polish Jews and were greatly damaged and desecrated during and after WWII.

A small park provides a place to reflect and meditate upon the tragic fate of 65 thousand Polish Jews during WWII.

Our next stop was the Krakow ghetto. The Jewish inhabitants of Kazimierz were forcibly relocated in 1941 by the German occupying forces into the Krakow ghetto just across the river in Podgorze (not, as often believed, in the historic Jewish district of Kazimierz).

The Ghetto was surrounded by the newly built walls that kept it separated from the rest of the city. All windows and doors that opened onto the "Aryan" side were ordered to be bricked up. Only four guarded entrances allowed traffic to pass in or out.

Fifteen thousand Jews were crammed into an area previously inhabited by 3,000 people who used to live in a district consisting of 30 streets, 320 residential buildings, and 3,167 rooms.

You can still find surviving portions of the ghetto wall to this day.

The only working pharmacy enclosed within the Kraków Ghetto belonged to Tadeusz Pankiewicz, a Polish Roman Catholic pharmacist permitted by the German authorities to operate his "Under the Eagle Pharmacy" there, upon his request. The scarce medications and tranquilizers supplied to the ghetto's residents (often free of charge) contributed to their survival.

In recognition of his heroic deeds in helping countless Jews in the Ghetto during the Holocaust, he was bestowed the title of the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem on February 10, 1983.

Above photo credit: Macieias at pl.wikipedia

From 30 May 1942 onward, the Nazis began systematic deportation from the Ghetto to surrounding concentration camps.

Jews were assembled on Zgody Square first and then escorted to the railway station in Prokocim. The first transport consisted of 7,000 people, the second, of additional 4,000 Jews deported to Belzec death camp in 1942. In 1943, the final 'liquidation' of the ghetto was carried out. Eight thousand Jews deemed able to work were transported to the Plaszow labor camp. Those deemed unfit for work (about 2,000 people) were killed in the streets of the ghetto. Any remaining people inside the ghetto were sent to Auschwitz.

Needless to say, Jim and I were sad and quiet at the enormity of the history we were seeing on this part of the tour. A Stunningly poignant monument stands today to commemorate this terrible suffering.

The last historic site we visited before returning to the old Kasimierz center, was Krakow’s fabled Oskar Schindler's Factory of Enameled Vessels ‘Emalia’. It has been turned into a modern museum devoted to the wartime experiences in Krakow under the five-year Nazi occupation during the World War II. The museum takes up the sprawling administration building of the defunct plant in the city’s industrial district of Zablocie on the right bank of Wisla river.

Oskar Schindler (28 April 1908 – 9 October 1974) was an ethnic German, industrialist and member of the Nazi Party. He is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and munitions factories. It is said that by the end of the war, Schindler had spent his entire fortune on bribes and black-market purchases of supplies for his workers.

Remaining in contact with many of the Jews he had met during the war, Schindler survived on donations sent by Schindlerjuden from all over the world. He died on 9 October 1974 and is buried in Jerusalem on Mount Zion, the only member of the Nazi Party to be honored in this way. For his work during the war, in 1963 Schindler was named Righteous Among the Nations, an award bestowed by the State of Israel on non-Jews who took an active role to rescue Jews during the Holocaust

Oskar Schindler, his factory, and the fate of its Jewish workforce feature prominently in the museum. Roughly a sixth of the museum’s permanent exhibition is dedicated to them. The rest shows prewar Krakow, the German invasion in 1939, Krakow as the capital of Poland under the Nazi occupation, the sorrows of everyday living in the occupied city, family life, the wartime history of Krakow Jews, the resistance movement, the underground Polish state, and lastly the Soviet capture of the city.

It is also now host to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow in the former workshops and a branch of the Historical museum of the City of Krakow.

Sadly, we did not have time to go into the museum on this particular tour (though you can book a tour that includes entry to the museum) because we had planned to visit the museum later. As with all trips, time can mess up the best of plans so we were not able to get back to the museum. It is now on our “have to get back to here” list!

Since 1988, a popular annual Jewish Cultural Festival has drawn people back to Kazimierz and re-introduced Jewish culture to a generation of Poles who have grown up without Poland’s historic Jewish community and the tours of this ancient community have educated tourists from around the world.

Since 1993, there has been an effort to restore important historic sites in Kazimierz and a booming growth in Jewish-themed restaurants, bars, bookstores and souvenir shops. Recently, Kazimierz along with Krakow, is having a small growth in Jewish population including some Jews returning to Kazimierz from Israel and America.

Below: Szeroka Street

Kazimierz is a part of the city of Krakow that is vibrant, historic and so interesting and is definitely a part of the old city that you should not miss!

Learn more about visiting the Kazimierz District of Krakow

Comments

A Never to be Forgotten Visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau

Learning About Poland's Jewish History in the Kazimierz District of Krakow

Cruising

Travel Tips

United States

Hawaii

Alaska

California

Florida

Washington D.C.

Virginia

Mexico

France

Belgium

Luxembourg

The Netherlands

England

Ireland

Scotland

Hungary

Australia

Categories

Email me at
[email protected]

Travel Tips

United States

Categories

Email me at[email protected]

Email me at
[email protected]