Day 2 in Poland

My glasses are still broken, and I am struggling to see the keys on my iPad, let alone what I write, but I am now sat in Krakow airport with about an hour to go until boarding, so I thought I would have a go, correcting any errors when I get home. Also there is free wifi here.

The start to yesterday was quite different to our first day in Poland - gone was the glorious sunshine and relative warmth, and in its place a dull, dark, damp and cold day.   How this met our mood, and in particular what we were about to experience.    At 9am the arranged transport called at the hotel to take us for our trip.

It was a strange journey - about an hour and a quarter, through suburbs, industrial areas and rural areas, until we arrive at Auschwitz number 1 camp.    We met our guide, got in our group, and off we went - not quite knowing what we would find, or how we would feel.    Through the gate with the famous words in German over it "work makes you free" and we were on our way.



My first impression on this part of the tour was how good the buildings looked. How normal they looked - we could have been in a nice part of the suburbs in any town or city.   Architecturaly pleasing on the eye, well built, and because of the fact they were now in a museum, well maintained.

Our tour round took us into many of these building, where we found the outward beauty contained an inner evil. The rooms, the photographs, the glasses, the shoes, the artificial limbs, the eating pots and drink inking utensils, the clothes, the human hair, the written records - and much more - they each told their sickening story

The execution gallows, the wall where inmates were shot, and then finally the gas chamber and the crematorium simply went to remind me, who has so often been accused of seeing good in every situation, just how evil human beings can be.

We had a great guide to show us round, and to give us so much information. After about 2 hours, this tour ended, and my thinking was, and still is, how respectable it all looked on the surface, how evil it all was behind the frontage.

Evil, wickedness, modern day terrorism can appear in such respecable guises, and to stereotype people into these catergories by their appearance, is a very dangerous practice, but it is one we do all the time, encouraged today by our press and our society.  We mustn't judge people by outward appearances, this was a lesson Jesus taught us time and time again, and yet we still so often do. This was my first lesson, a lesson we must all learn, a lesson we fail to learn at our peril.

And then we made the short journey to camp 2 - Birkenau.   Having said what I have just said, Birkenau looked just like you would expect "Auschitz" to look.    It was bleak, stark, regimented, basic, "evil" looking.   The iconic building with the arch through which a railway line passed, then to fan out into a number of sidings, where the human cargo was unloaded onto the so-called platforms, and then dispatched to various sections of the camp.    Usually it was to the death chamber!    The inmates who lived for a short time here, described the previous camp Auschwitz as being like a hotel compared to this.

The brick and wooden barracks where people were kept, reminded me of so many places where livestock were kept, and when you are told that up to 10 people would sleep in an area where I would want to sleep on my own, then I realise that the Nazis treated the Jewish people like animals - or should I say worse than animals.

The gas chambers and the crematoria had in the main all been destroyed here, by the retreating and fleeing Germans, and much of it just lay silent, as it had been left.

I struggled to find God here.

I have long held the view that evil flourished where there is a total disregard or deniual to God's presence.    And this place was no exception.   The nazis weren't doing it in God's name, or carrying out some sort of religious crusade, but rather to glory in the strength of the Germanic race.   Could God have stopped it?   Well, I like to think he did, but not before a great price was paid.

But I did get a glimpse of God peeking at me, not between the huts, or in the buildings, but in the 1000s of photographs I saw in the buildings - photographs of people of all ages, women children, girls, boys, men - none well built, most looking like skeletons - but each relating and communicating to each other - in fear, in sorrow, in bewilderment, in anger, in sorrow in laughter - each displaying the human side of God.   Once again this feeling cane to me that when we suffer, God suffers with us.   It isn't how it was meant to be, it is not as God has made it or intended it.

I will have much more to say on Auschitz 1 and 2 at a later time.

After leaving the camps, we had lunch, albeit a very late lunch, and then on a 3 hour trip (all on foot, underground with 2 miles of walking) round a Salt Mine. It was very interesting, but nothing compared to what we had experienced earlier.

Sorry about the delay in blogging this post.