Krakow 2/6/10

We visited Auschwitz today taking the high priced tour. We found out later we were mostly paying for the convenience of a tour bus with a movie about the camp that played along the way. After the train fiasco though we really didn’t care about shelling out a few more bucks. I’m happy I decided to go as this camp is different from Dachau that I had visited in Munich. The buildings were still up as opposed to the Dachau camp where mostly everything was leveled. This one definitely hit me as well. One of the rooms in the museum had all the shaved hair from the women that was used for clothing afterwards. About a 1/3 of the 7 tons of hair that was originally found was on display in huge piles behind the glass cases. The amount was definitely on a grand scale. Other room shad piles of luggage, clothes, etc. I couldn’t get any pictures of these rooms as photography is only allowed outside. We also traveled to the nearby Birkenau camp. It was very frigid and freezing here with the wind. It’s hard to imagine how cold the prisoners must have been at the time with what little clothing that they had if I was as cold as I was all bundled up.