There are many web sites and books which have been written on the subject of the second world war and the programmes of death which the Nazis carried out, but this part of my blog is not concerned with that, more with the the visit I paid during the latter part of 2006 to Auschwitz and its lesser known but more diabolical counterpart, Birkenau.
The two camps are about three kilometres apart and lie about 65 KM from the beautiful city of Krakow in the south of Poland. Here is a map of the area to give you some indication of where it lies in relation to Krakow.
In a nutshell, Auschwitz was a small camp which was set up to perfect the methods of killing the inmates who came to the place. It also housed Interrogation and punishment areas. Birkenau on the other hand was purely built for the purpose of murder. As such it was incredibly successful.
People from all over Europe were trained in there and killed.
Enough has been written about both places for me not to repeat what has been already stated. But, just have a look at the aerial photograph to get some idea of the overall size of the place.
It took me over two hours to just walk around the perimeter and view what exhibits there were. A most incredible and awe-inspiring place, and a very sad place as well.
On my visit to Birkenau I was surprised to find the place full of groups of Polish school children. From the numbers of Polish people, including school children, who have visited the place it is apparent that a visit to the place is on the school timetable for every school in the country. Not a bad thing. Maybe it should also be on the timetable for every country in Europe and the middle east. The way things are going, it cannot be long before we see the same excesses and barbarity coming to the fore again as we saw then, and in Russia during the times of Stalin.
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