April 18, 2025 Auschwitz-Birkenau

 I can’t believe our stays just keep getting



better and better. Set the alarm for 5 AM so that we can get to Auschwitz so that we can get in as we have no reservations. At this point we have absolutely no idea the process for getting in so we leave our hotel at about 6 AM and drive to Auschwitz. I’m so glad that we stayed in the town called Oswiecim which is about 11 minutes from the concentration camp.

For every beautiful sunny day that we’ve had there just has to be rain. And I think today would be the most appropriate day for that. Today we will visit the very most sad place in the whole world; Auschwitz. It set the mood for the day and I don’t think it would’ve felt right coming here on a bright sunny day.




Our GPS takes us right to the site of Auschwitz II-Birkenau and there’s a parking lot there so we pull in and park but there isn’t another soul around. Finally a couple of vans pulled in with some Brits in it and they walk towards the building and are told that the tickets are bought at the museum which is at Auschwitz 1. It’s 3 km away and by the time we get turned around and drive to the different address it’s now 7 o’clock. So much for the early start. We get in the lineup which is probably half a kilometre long which we are absolutely blown away with. The parking attendant told us that there was about a two hour wait to get in. Well, let me tell you, that lineup more than doubled, while we waited more than three hours before we got our tickets. Now that we’ve got our tickets, we have to wait until 130 for an English tour guide. While we wait, we have a bite to eat in the restaurant and play a game of Phase 10. We don’t feel too bad, because everybody’s in the same boat as us and really don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing. We have a group of Italians behind us and a group of Danish people in front of us. Fortunately, the Dane‘s spoke very good English and we had quite a good conversation with them for those three hours that we waited. OK enough about our wait time.

Our English-speaking guide took our group which comprised of about 25 people in it and we started in Auschwitz 1 which was the original death camp. It’s very hard to put into words what we saw during the tour. It is so hard to understand how human beings could treat other human beings in such an evil manner. The whole thing was totally inhumane. I did take quite a few pictures while on the tour, and that might suffice to say what the tour is all about. There were certain areas where you were not allowed to take pictures out of respect for what had occurred in those places.

Auschwitz II-Birkenau rail line where prisoners entered the camp
This was a women’s building and the bunks were three high and each bunk held 3 to 6 women.


This was the gas chamber, which was destroyed before the Nazis left camp

This is the very place that Rudolf Hoss, the commander of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp was hung
The area to the right of the rail line is where the prisoners would get off and be selected as to whether they would go on to work or would go directly to the gas chambers.
The Memorial statue
The typical uniform for prisoners
This is a reproduction of the wall, where prisoners were shot in the back of the head. 

Prosthetics
Hair
Shoes

These were the empty cans that contained Zylon B pellets that were used in the gas chambers.
We watched a film of what to expect before we started the tour
A memorial containing ash from prisoners.
And of course, the infamous sign as you enter the concentration camp

The next phase was to be shuttled over to Auschwitz II-Birkenau about 3 km away. This was where we had driven in the morning to begin with.

This picture if you make it larger, you can see where all of the concentration camps were and how they all fed into Auschwitz for extermination of the prisoners.

One thing we found particularly interesting was the Kanada (or Canada) sorting facility at Auschwitz. It was the building that was used to sort all of the belongings taken from the prisoners, including everything taken after they had been murdered. It started as a slang term for the sorting warehouse, but became used by the administration as well. Canada was seen as the land of plenty……this is something that we had never heard before.

It was a long and emotional day and by 4:30 PM we were headed back to our hotel for a little R&R. 






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