Krakow & Auschwitz-Birkenau

Well, after finally getting some needed rest, we started out our day by visiting the Jewish Quarter of Krakow known as Kazimierz. We visited a few synagogues (including one of the oldest in all of Poland), a Jewish cemetery and walked around the area. We drove to a memorial of chairs called the Umschlagplatz followed by a trip outside Schindler's Factory for some photo opps.

We knew that this was going to be a very emotional, long and exhausting day for everyone. We took a bus ride to Auschwitz where it was extremely powerful to see the 'Arbeit Macht Frei' sign (Works makes you free) and walked around the camp. The weather suddenly began to change into very dark & cloudy and while we were visiting one of the barracks and very intense part of the camp, was incredible thunder & lightning and was very apropo for our location. The scene was surreal and difficult for anyone to comprehend the atrocities that occurred and impossible to fathom we were actually in the death camp of Auschwitz that all of us have heard about our entire lives. We visited building 27 which has a newly open exhibit in the last year put together by an Israeli group that designed Yad Vashem (Holocaust Memorial) in Jerusalem. It had 4,000,000 names and everyone was looking up their family's names and was shocked to see so many of those that perished who shared the very same name and could have been our relatives.

After time in Auschwitz, we went over to Auschwitz II (Birkenau) which is only kilometers away. This camp seemed endless and keep going on and on and couldn't see the end of the camp. This was where the majority of those sent were exterminated. Auschwitz was the site of the killing of 1.1 million Jews, which was 90% of those killed in this camp. The numbers were staggering and the locale as well as we walked through the very steps that our forefathers & foremothers did even though we were the ones to walk OUT. We concluded our time there with a ceremony read by many of the ISTers and some contemplative time for everyone.......NEVER FORGET!!