A Fun day at the death camps

Today was the day we had set aside for our visit to Auschwitz and the Birkenau death camps, unfortunately it was the same day that 20 coaches of uber annoying Italian school kids had chosen. Auschwitz is the German name for the town of Oświęcim and was also the name of the work camp built on a captured Polish barracks, originally set up for Polish political prisoners and Soviet pows. At whatever point along the line when the nazis went completely nuts they set up Birkenau the super efficient bmw factory of death on the edge of the town. Auschwitz itself was smaller than we had imagined but very chilling with its familiar front gate and triple barbed wire fences, the buildings themselves are filled with displays and images of the horrors that took place. After spending some time here getting annoyed with the millions of italians that managed to stand in the way of every door we walked the 3km to the edge of town to Birkenau. Birkenau was a different cuttle of fish - purpose built for one thing, just to sort, murder and dispose of thousands of people. It really was shocking how efficent the process was, a long building with a changing room, gas chamber then incinerator all in one line all under one roof. People in one end ash from the other. It was hard to believe that at no point did someone say 'hey henrich isn't this all just a little bit f.up?' The size and purpose built nature of it all really rammed home how savage the whole thing was. It was also strange to see people houses backing onto the site, people who probably have a bedroom window view looking out over the gas chambers. 'I live down at number 23' 'oh is that the one next door to the death camp?'. The day also made us aware of how shafted Poland was during the war, with over 20% being wiped out. Hitler specifcally ordering the destruction of Poland and its people, then invasion by Russia followed by a lovely bit of forced communism for the next 5o odd years.
After all this fun and joy we caught a train back to krakow which was hillarious, the train seemed to expend more energy moving up and down left and right instead of going forwards, the broken door made conversation almost impossible with the screeching and banging. We then stopped off at our local for a few beers and a trip to the supermarket to stock up on oven pizzas and packing for our early start tomorrow!