We went to Auschwitz and Birkenau yesterday and it was truly, truly horrific. I don't think seeing anything has ever upset me so much. I came back from the tour in the evening and had planned to do a Polish vodka tasting and then head out but that just didn't seem appropriate and I was too sad, I just went to bed, which was good because I was really tired, we went out the first night and only came in a 5.30am, and before that in Budapest, absolutely NO sleep happened, we were sharing a room with 3 chronic snorers and one RAGING slapper.
I think the worst part about Auschwitz was going into the gas chambers and seeing the scratch marks down the sides of the walls from when people were trying to get out, and the dispay of thousands of people's hair, just an entire room of hair that they chopped off after they had killed them, to make blankets out of, yeah. It was behind a glass wall, little girl's braids and all sorts, man that made it pretty real. There was a similar room full of people's shoes and the thing that upset me the most were the tiny little shoes, sweet little baby shoes, that's when the crying started. Just absolutely mind-blowing and outrageous that all that was allowed to happen.
The death wall was completely shocking too, they would strip people naked and lead them out there, shoot them in the back of the head. I just stood where the soldiers would have stood, staring at the wall and just thought HOW did they do it, how did they just shoot an innocent person in the back of the head and think that was okay. There's just no words to explain what it was like there, to touch the actual wall, to walk into the gas chambers and stand on the selection platform by the train tracks, where they decided who was being gased, who they were going to work to death, or torture. I was all so real, so SO real.
There was fog everywhere, everything was grey and silent, just one big massive grave yard. Oh, and the cat, the black cat that just wanders around, something needs to be done about that cat, it's creepy as hell. The crying is about to start just thinking about it all again, I think I'm going to do the walking tour of Krakow, and have some perogi (most delicious Polish dish) for lunch, maybe that will make me feel better.
