Took a guided tour (80ZL)to Auschwitz. It’s around 100 km from Krakow and the trip there took around 1.5 hours.

From 1940 – 1945, around 1.2 to 1.5 millions people were killed. 80% of the people that were sent to Aushwitz were sent to the gas chamber on the first day. Those that were selected to stay at the camp were put to work. There are 3 concentration camps in Auschwitz. We spent 2.5 hours at the first one because it’s better preserved and some of the buildings were converted into museums. However, we weren’t allow to take pictures of the museum.

Arbeit Macht Frei (Work will set you free)

Inside the museums there were some belongings of the prisoners, such as human hair, shoes, bags, the gas tanks in the gas chambers. There were many tourists and I guess everyone felt a deep sense of sadness and shocked at what the Nazi did.
It was snowing and raining, the temperature is around 3C and everyone was shivering so in a way we can feel that the weather was a big blow to the prisoners. I can’t imagine how anyone can survive in this kind of camp.

The other camp is called Auschwitz Bickenau which has 300 baracks and is 20 times bigger. We only spent 30 minutes there since the camp is too big to walk around.

Inside each barack cramped around 400 prisoners.

It’s a cold and snowy day

The weather was snowing pretty heavily in the afternoon.

Finally bought a new laptop after looking around for 2 days. I bought a Asus netbook (1200 ZL, around $400) and then realized that the operating system is in Polish.
Went to a Polish restaurant with some hostel mates.

Tried Pierlogi, a kind of polish food that looks like pasta but it stuffed with ingredients such as meat, mushroom and cheese.

Met up some CS people (Basia and Cassie) at a bar called Singer, in Kazimierz – the former Jewish town which now has many bars. The bar has Singer sewing machine on every table. Kazimierz is at the south part of the old town which has a history of Jewish dwellings before the Nazi came.

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