Auschwitz.

[1duck]

I went and wished i hadn't bothered wasting 25 quid, better than auschwitz was the awesome taxi driver with the big black volga who drove us around for three days. It was some ex secret police car so it commanded awesome respect on the roads, it was like being some dodgy russian diplomat for 3 days.

Anyway yeah auschwitz was well over rated, it was just a run down batch of sheds grey and miserable. Theres so many better things to see in poland that i don't get why its such a tourist draw its like everyone feels they have to go and i suppose i fell for it, but in retrospect i wish i hadn't.

 

[The Ken]

Don't let 1duck put you off I'm sure they'll be putting in roller coasters soon to make it more fun.

 

[tintin40]

Anyway yeah auschwitz was well over rated, it was just a run down batch of sheds grey and miserable..

What would you expect to see?? It more about what went on there :roll: Or is that stating the obvious :roll:

Their are still people who say non of it happened. :roll: A visit to such places should on all school trips abroad

 

[1duck]

Anyway yeah auschwitz was well over rated, it was just a run down batch of sheds grey and miserable..

What would you expect to see?? It more about what went on there :roll: Or is that stating the obvious :roll:

Their are still people who say non of it happened. :roll: A visit to such places should on all school trips abroad

I used to talk to a survivor of dachau on a near daily basis who lived near us when I grew up so i guess i was pre-jaded by all his tales, as for making it compulsary well thats just pointless. His words certainly were far more harrowing than the experience of a auschwitz as a place, but yeah auschwitz did have a feel of a very exploited tourist attraction, more disney land than death camp it wasn't really what i expected.

If you want a holocaust memorial that really strikes home go see the new one in berlin, its a series of pilars once you're inside its like a maze...it certainly had more of an effect on me than auschwitz ever could.

 

[Baron von Trumpen Bottom]

my school was /is/ next to belsen concentration camp,,,i went in 82 and 83 as part of our history lessons....truly something that moulds the way you think about true oppressive regimes.my friend les lives near auswitz where he goes once a year or so with his wife,,,,,,,,i think once is enough and never want to see it again,,,i recall being driven past belsen everyday and never knew it was there...until you drive down a small road and come out into a big wide open plot of land with long mounds and a sign with estimated number of dead in each,,,,,,each sign was roughly 5 to ten thousand in each pit.....all the birds stayed away from there.. a deathly quiet place too..

Was posted there and Fally 96-98 the reasons the birds dont fly over it is because of the lime used to break the bodies down when they were put in the mass graves. The birds apperently dont like the scent/vapour that the lime is still putting out.

Took a load of guys to the Russian cemetery behind it around 50,000 buried in mass graves they were left to the elememts and had to dig holes/caves into the ground to survive never seems to get a mention when Belsen gets discussed everyone just associates it with the Jewish inmates.

It didn't bother me walking through there with the lads in mid-summer near midnight but driving along the main road next to it were it had the sweaping bend at night used to give me the creeps and I'd hoof it past it. Just didnt feel right.

There is another load of cemeteries down in Fally with 1000's of Czech's/Poles and other eastern european nationalities.

There's certain bits of the training area near Belsen were you werent allowed to dig in as they didnt know what was underneath the soil.

We were talking about the area on another site I use some interesting stuff about spooky going's on was mentioned.

 

[cornholio's RC200]

If not compulsory, I'd say people need to go to these places. It's a heartbreaking place to go but it teaches valuable lessons for life; it quite literally takes you to dark places where no-one should ever have gone or will go. The day we went it was pouring with rain all day and it doesn't even bear thinking what it was like when it snows (the tour doesn't go to Birkenau then because the road in is just about impassable). We were in a group of about 10 and were taken around the sites by a very informative guide. To think that the RAF could have bombed the place flat during the war because they had the reconnaisance photos from there but it was decided it wasn't a valid target...

Regardless of the cost you must see it. It's a bit of a cliche that everybody who goes to Krakow must go to Auschwitz but as I say, it must be seen.

If you want to see where the concentration camp scenes from Schindler's List were shot then go out to Krakus Mound (interesting in its own way) just outside of Krakow and you can look down on a limestone quarry that actually used to be a labour camp in WWII. Props from the movie are still there - like fake gravestones making up the road in...


I do agree about the rest of Krakow; the salt mine at Wieliczka is one of the most incredible places I've ever been to and the main square is stunning.

It's also important to take in some of the other important parts of the history of Krakow that a lot of people don't see; the jewish section is very interesting, partly destroyed synagogues and apartments are mixed with new buildings. Nobody goes to the abandoned buildings to repair and live in them in case the descendents (if there are any) return to claim what is theirs.
Another place is the steelworks at Nowa Huta which was built by the Soviets up on a hill just outside the city. It's said that the site was chosen especially so that all the smoke from the works fell on "bourgeoise" Krakow... A friend of ours who grew up in Nowa Huta took us around the town and it's almost like walking around in a military state of its own; apart from a square that used to have a statue of Lenin in it but is now named after Ronald Reagan.... There's a strange church there as well shaped like an ark.

If you think I'm going over the top about Krakow, it's one of the most compelling places I've ever been to. So much history and so different with it. So I'd say definitely visit Auschwitz but remember to visit all the sights of the city as well.


The Berlin holocaust memorial is a bizarre construction; deliberately set up so that anyone going there can make their own conclusions on what it represents. It's built on a rather unstable piece of land and appears to have been designed so that the concrete blocks will naturally crack and make their own shapes as time will go by. As was said by 1duck it's like a maze inside; very eerie and within a quarter mile walk of the Brandenburg gate. In fact, the most expensive hotel in Berlin looks out on it and just across the road the other side is the car park used as a dog toilet which was the site of Hitler's bunker...

Whilst you're in Berlin though you should go to the Topographie des Terrors for the ultimate horror. It's the old headquarters of the SS and Gestapo (all now demolished apart from a few pieces of walls) and as you can tell is truly unholy land. There's a permanent exhibition on there which gives the story about how a country could be duped into supporting such a regime which turned into the despicable outcome we all should know about. Beggars belief how there are still holocaust denials et al with the evidence piled up.