We set off at the end of May for a seminar with ASF in Poland. The ten-hour train journey from Berlin to Katowice gave me a chance to catch up with the rest of the volunteers and to try my luck at hangman in German (I didn't do very well).
We spent the first part of the week at the International Youth Meeting Centre near the Auschwitz memorial site in Oswiecim. Instead of going straight to the Auschwitz site, we first spent a full day visiting the city itself and getting to know its history. I had visited Auschwitz by myself once before, but like a lot of people, I just went there for a day from Krakow, so it was nice to see a different side to the city. We visited the castle in the city centre, as well as the old synagogue and Jewish cemetery.
The next morning we went to Auschwitz I, the smaller of the two main camps, and the one containing the exhibitions. It is a very hectic place to visit. There are so many people that individual visitors aren't even permitted in until after 3pm. Instead, you have to be part of an organised group with a guide. To stop the guides all having to shout over each other in different languages, you also have to listen to them through earphones.
As you go around the exhibitions, each group has to find a bit of space for itself and you're constantly being pushed along by the waves of visitors coming through each room. All in all it makes for a very rushed experience. You have no time to just stop for a minute to properly absorb what you're being told or what you're seeing in front of you: huge rooms piled with suitcases, shoes, glasses, clothes, all taken from people as they arrived and before they were murdered. There's hardly a moment to even attempt to comprehend the scale of the horrific crimes that took place there.
We went to the much larger Auschwitz II-Birkenau site on the following morning. By contrast, we were virtually the only people there, at least when we first arrived early in the morning. We had a short tour with the same guide from the day before and then spent a long time walking around the site, this time getting the chance to take everything in at our own pace.
By the end of these two days I was wrecked, and it was the first time I genuinely felt that I had had enough of dealing with the Holocaust and the other related topics. Though I had been working in Buchenwald for almost a year at that stage, there is still a very different feeling and atmosphere in Auschwitz, where at least one million people were murdered in the most clinical way.
Luckily, the next morning we took the train from Oswiecim to Krakow, where we got to spend two days exploring the city. One of the volunteers from our group comes from Krakow, so we got to see plenty of interesting places off the beaten track.
This is a short post, but I'm into the last week of my programme now and trying to get everything finished off before I head home!
We spent the first part of the week at the International Youth Meeting Centre near the Auschwitz memorial site in Oswiecim. Instead of going straight to the Auschwitz site, we first spent a full day visiting the city itself and getting to know its history. I had visited Auschwitz by myself once before, but like a lot of people, I just went there for a day from Krakow, so it was nice to see a different side to the city. We visited the castle in the city centre, as well as the old synagogue and Jewish cemetery.
The next morning we went to Auschwitz I, the smaller of the two main camps, and the one containing the exhibitions. It is a very hectic place to visit. There are so many people that individual visitors aren't even permitted in until after 3pm. Instead, you have to be part of an organised group with a guide. To stop the guides all having to shout over each other in different languages, you also have to listen to them through earphones.
As you go around the exhibitions, each group has to find a bit of space for itself and you're constantly being pushed along by the waves of visitors coming through each room. All in all it makes for a very rushed experience. You have no time to just stop for a minute to properly absorb what you're being told or what you're seeing in front of you: huge rooms piled with suitcases, shoes, glasses, clothes, all taken from people as they arrived and before they were murdered. There's hardly a moment to even attempt to comprehend the scale of the horrific crimes that took place there.
We went to the much larger Auschwitz II-Birkenau site on the following morning. By contrast, we were virtually the only people there, at least when we first arrived early in the morning. We had a short tour with the same guide from the day before and then spent a long time walking around the site, this time getting the chance to take everything in at our own pace.
By the end of these two days I was wrecked, and it was the first time I genuinely felt that I had had enough of dealing with the Holocaust and the other related topics. Though I had been working in Buchenwald for almost a year at that stage, there is still a very different feeling and atmosphere in Auschwitz, where at least one million people were murdered in the most clinical way.
Luckily, the next morning we took the train from Oswiecim to Krakow, where we got to spend two days exploring the city. One of the volunteers from our group comes from Krakow, so we got to see plenty of interesting places off the beaten track.
This is a short post, but I'm into the last week of my programme now and trying to get everything finished off before I head home!
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