In the morning we visited Oscar Schindler's Enamel Factory in Krakow, Poland. The last two times I was here we were not allowed inside, but it has since been turned into a museum presenting the history of Krakow's inhabitants, both Polish & Jewish, under Nazi occupation, along with Schindler's story & those he saved. Only a few original items remain from the factory including his office & desk.
Schindler is a very controversial figure, & Steven Spielberg is accused of romanticizing him & taking creative liberties in his 1993 movie Schindler's List. The movie was filmed in Krakow, was awarded seven oscars, & the story of Jews from Schindler's factory became famous across the world. Whatever the truth is about Schindler, he saved the lives of over 1,000 Polish Jews employed at his factory, & the descendents of those survivors number in the thousands.
Cor told an interesting story about him & Miep Gies being seated at a table with Emily Schindler, Oscar's widow, at a fund raiser for the Anne Frank House in New York City. One of them asked if she felt her husband had been depicted fairly by Spielberg in the movie. She replied that she did not like the way he was shown drinking so much. She was then asked how she felt about his womanizing, & she said , "After one, what difference does 100 make?"
This afternoon we went to infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau, my third visit. There were actually three camps, Auschwitz concentration camp, Birkeau built as a death camp, & Monowitz, the work camp where Elie Wiesel & his father were. There are no words to adequately describe what visitors see. i have often said that I wish every American citizen was required to visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washinton DC, for I truly believe it would change people's lives & the way they treat others. That goes for Auschwitz.
We entered the concentration camp by passing under the famous iron sign, "Albrect Macht Frie"--work makes one free, a euphemism designed to make entering inmates believe that if they worked hard, they would earn their freedom. Some may remember that the original sign was stolen & recovered a few years ago. The original sign is in safekeeping somewhere; the replica remains.
The concentration camp has barracks that have been turned into a museum where visitors go through & see separate displays of items brought to camp by the victims: suitcases, toiletries, prayer shawls, shoes, eye glasses, prosthetics of all types, & bundles of hair cut from corpses ready to be used for submarine pipe insulation, to be woven into cloth, & stuffed into mattresses. Like the display of shoes at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the shoes affect me the most, for I cannot help but wonder what happened to the wearers--the baby who wore the little shoe, the woman who wore the high heel, the workman who wore the boot?
True to Nazi efficiency, the train tracks ran right into the camp at Birkenau.
They had four crematoriums, & when the war was near its end & they knew the Soviets would soon arrive, they dynamited them so as not to leave evidence. What remains of all four is piles of broken cement.
At Birkenau we entered a women's barrack with the beds made of three tiers, the first two wood & the bottom one cement & five women would sleep on each tier. It was a very hot day while we toured with full stomachs after enjoying a hearty lunch. We all carried water bottles & got back on an air-conditioned bus. I tried to imagine 700 women jammed into the building starving & with no water.
The whole place defies imagination. Elie Wiesel said, "Auschwitz shall forever remain a question mark to me." I agree.
On a lighter note because when studying the Holocaust, or touring Holocaust sites, it is necessary to to look for some merriment & remain positive or one would go crazy so both before & after a lovely dinner back in Krackow, we shopped in the old city square which is filled with shops. I discovered beautiful Christmas ornaments decorated with Swarovski crystals, & I went a bit overboard in my buying. Now the trick will be to transport them home. We ended our evening with a glass of wine at a little outside restaurant/bar on the city square. Again--pure magic.
