Thursday July 24
Today we had 2 half day tours with Wojtek as our driver. After
breakfast we drove to Wieliczka Salt Mine to visit the famous Royal Salt Mine
with numerous underground chambers, chapels and salt sculptures that is on
the UNESCO World Heritage List.
Wojtek met us and explained our day. The salt mine was
around 30 minutes from Krakow, and he took us to get our tickets and told us
where to stand in line. We were early and he pointed out a nice area to a small
park to walk around until it was time to line up. He said he was going back
home to have breakfast and would be back to pick us up.
We got sectioned off into a group and our guide led us down
the 800 or more stairs. The Tourist Route guided tour takes approximately 2
hours. (at the end we returned to the surface by elevator)
From Neolithic times, sodium chloride (table salt) was
produced here from the upwelling brine. The Wieliczka salt mine, excavated from
the 13th century and produced table salt continuously until 1996, as one of the
world's oldest operating salt mines. Due to falling salt prices and mine
flooding, commercial salt mining was discontinued in 1996.
The Wieliczka Salt Mine reaches a depth of 1,073 ft and
extends via horizontal passages and chambers for over 178 miles. The rock salt
is naturally of varying shades of grey, resembling unpolished granite rather
than the white crystalline substance that might be expected.
The mine features dozens of statues and four chapels carved out of the rock salt by the miners. The older sculptures have been supplemented with new carvings made by contemporary artists. There is also an underground lake with a short sound and light show with the music of Frédéric Chopin, exhibits on the history of salt mining, and a 2.2-mile visitors' route which is less than 2 percent of the mine passages' total length. The St. Kinga Chapel and specific chambers are used for private functions, including weddings. A chamber has walls carved by miners to resemble wood, as in wooden churches built in early centuries.
After the tour, Wojtek pointed out where we could grab some
lunch and he met us after.
We continued to the Auschwitz – Birkenau Museum, which is also
on the UNESCO list. It was around a 2-hour drive to get there. Wojtek had music
on, and we took in the views/snoozed and he pointed out a few things here and
there.
Once we arrived Wojtek got us our tickets for the guided small
group tour. Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest in the Third Reich as well as
the most notorious of the six concentration and extermination camps established
by Nazi Germany to implement its Final Solution policy.
From the website of the Museum, “Auschwitz I is where the
Nazis opened the first Auschwitz camps for men and women, where they carried
out the first experiments at using Zyklon B to put people to death, where they
murdered the first mass transports of Jews, where they conducted the first
criminal experiments on prisoners, where they carried out most of the
executions by shooting, where the central jail for prisoners from all over the
camp complex was located in Block No. 11, and where the camp commandant's
office and most of the SS offices were located. From here, the camp
administration directed the further expansion of the camp complex.
Birkenau is where the Nazis erected most of the machinery of
mass extermination in which they murdered approximately one million European
Jews. At the same time, Birkenau was the largest concentration camp (with
nearly 300 primitive barracks, most of them wooden). Over a hundred thousand
prisoners were here in 1944: Jews, Poles, Roma, and others. The nearly 200
hectares of grounds include the ruins of the gas chambers and crematoria and
places filled with human ashes. There are primitive prisoner barracks and
kilometers of fences and roads.”
When we were in Prague, we visited the concentration camp in
Terezin. Terezín was a propaganda ghetto and transit camp, while Auschwitz was
a massive and efficient complex for forced labor and mass extermination. The
deception of Terezín was a key part of the larger horror carried out at
Auschwitz.
The buildings are original, but the insides are presented
authentically to show various scenarios. The tour did a great job of presenting
the horrors that happened and explaining the various areas. We started the tour
in Auschwitz. Photos were allowed everywhere except the human hair that the SS
kept and the standing cells in Block 11 where they were sent to stand in small
narrow cells as a severe form of punishment. They were roughly 1 square yard
with 4 to a cell with only 1 square inch opening for air. They could be in
there for days at a time.
Particularly poignant was the visit to the former gas
chamber and crematorium, where out of respect for the thousands murdered by the
SS, we were instructed to maintain silence.
After Auschwitz we had a short restroom break and then
caught the bus to Birkenau. It has the famous view of the railroad tracks
leading to the extermination camp.
After the tours we had about 3 hours of driving to get back to Krakow. We were tired and decided to have dinner at the rooftop restaurant of the hotel. Besides the great views the food was really good.
Salt Mine https://photos.app.goo.gl/AQFoaBK62B26Py5p6
Auschwitz - Birkenau https://photos.app.goo.gl/HtxdRKE5JoSxCJuM7
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