It almost seems like that sentence is enough to convey the weight of our day. But I will try to spend significant time conveying what it was like to be on that sacred ground.
It is overwhelming to tour such places and try ti absorb and process one of the crecendos of human suffering and social injustices of modern times. To see how the victims lived and died was sad and touching. But for me, to fully understand the magnitude of the German effeciency in inacting a death factory is simply beyond comprehension. It realy, really was a factory for obliterating a generation of Europeans. Jewish, yes, but over a dozen other religious and ethnic groups were practically wiped from the world.
The hardest part was at the first camp we toured a building that held exhibitions of "stuff." There was a pile of broken, discarded eye glasses gathered from the gas chamber. A long, long room lined down both sides with glass panels and behind the panels were tens of thousands of shoes. In one special exhibit were only children's shoes. Another ehxhibit contained tons and tons (literally tons. I wish I could remember exactly) of human hair that the Nazis gathered to manufacture products to supply their war effort. We even saw a bolt of fabric manufactured from human hair. It was so angering and sad and the helplessness of it all from a victim's standpoint... sigh...
At the second camp we saw the true factory of death. Forgive my spelling, but it was Auschitz-Berkanou... This is the large camp where they shipped humans in on trains and told them to "shower" before their transfer. We all know what the showers were.
We stood on the site of where ashes and remains were buried and our personal guide pointed out bone fragments embedded in the soil. Sobering.
I am going to attempt to directly load some of today's photos into this post, so I sincerely apologize if they are HUGE. I just discovered a CF card reader on his desk and want to sieze the day.
Also, I am going to post a few lighter notes/photos from today and tomorrow (if time allows) we will upload a whole gaggle of fun stuff from our trip including a LOT of food pictures and photos from our visits with our hosts, clubs, etc... I am homesick for Warsaw already. The people there were amazing and I have a feeling that I will feel the same way about Katowice.
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I only did one. :-( It took almost 10 minutes. It is getting late and I'm sure my hosts want to go to bed. All the computers are in Polish, so it is hard to batch edit and make them small enough to upload. I'm shooting VERY high-resolution.
In any case, I'd like to point out that there is now a link to Laura's Flickr page were you can check for more photos from the trip that won't make it on the blog. Very soon we are going to figure out how to use/find reliable fast internet in poland and you'll be doing nothing but downloading and viewing our travels.
Another side note... I want to sincerely thank Rotary International for this opportunity. When I left the train station yesterday evening in Katowice I began to cry. Not from homesickness, but because of the overwhelming emotions of being able to have a experience like this. I am honored to be in Poland and can't wait to share more thoughts along this line...
:-)
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