Poland was not included in our Viking River and Land Tour, but since it is a manageable distance from Prague, we decided to make a private day trip to Auschwitz. Poland is one of the countries we wanted to visit but this time, there is an opportunity to finally make the trip. We left Prague at 5 am and drove to Auschwitz, took the tour and was back in Prague by 7:45 pm. It would have been earlier but like in any big city, traffic is usual.
Auschwitz concentration camp was "a network of German Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II." The guided tour was 1 hour and 45 minutes, including a tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
There are 3 major concentration camps in Auschwitz: Auschwitz I with approximately 16,000 inmates; Auschwitz II-Birkenau with approximately 90,000 and where the largest mass extermination facilities and gas chambers are located; and Auschwitz III-Monowitz with approximately 10,000 inmates used for forced labor. We visited Auschwitz I and II and those were more than enough to actually see what has remained in these areas and grasp the kind of life and/or death that will forever be etched in our minds, more so the survivors and survivors families.
We didn't have any expectation on what we will see and hear, only the eagerness to actually be in this place that have fascinated us, ever since we watched Schindler's List, reading the Diary of Ann Frank and countless movies and documentaries about the inhuman acts of men during those days in that part of the world. Being there where all it happened brought memories of our first glimpse of the stories when we toured the Holocaust Museum in Israel, a few years ago. Overall, we can only pray for the souls of these people who were in that situation and hope that nothing of that sort should ever happen again.
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