Auschwitz.
It is easy to delay well-formed plans in Krakow; even easier when you stay at the Ars Hostel, where every day a new adventure is advertised, and every night lasts until sunrise. Once I delayed my pilgrimage for reasons pertaining to a rather awful hangover; another for a trip to the mountains. But yesterday I completed my pilgrimage, and went to Auschwitz.
Many people have said many things about Auschwitz, and I won't repeat them. I will say that everyone - not just people of Jewish heritage, but everyone - should visit Auschwitz once in their lives. It was a haunting moment to walk through those famous gates, underneath the Orwellian Arbeit Macht Frei. The gates are smaller than I imagined, but more than anything, they were just there.
A few things that I did notice, though:
1. The first thing I saw as I walked off the bus was a hot dog stand. Then, inside the Auschwitz museum, you can go to the cafe and eat hamburgers. Alright, this isn't an exclusively Jewish pilgrimage, but really?
2. I appreciate that it got to 38 degrees celcius yesterday, but is it really appropriate to visit a death camp in a skimpy, cleavage-revealing midriff top and short shorts?
3. Did it add to or detract from the experience that our tour guide was a stern, expressionless woman with a stern, monotonous voice repeating rehearsed phrases in a thick Polish accent, as though she got her position through her experience as an SS guard in World War II?
In any case, everyone reading this should at least consider going to Auschwitz.
(After Auschwitz, I took my Proust-reading companion and showed him the Jazz Rock Cafe. Fortunately for both of us, I didn't see anyobdy there that I recognised from the night before. It was incredibly busy for a Monday night, even at 2am, and the music last night was far better (Beck! Massive Attack!). Will taught me to say hello in Polish, and I brazenly got him to bet me that I wouldn't say that exact hello to the cold-faced, but quite amazingly attractive black-clad girl dancing by the bar. He was far too infatuated to do so himself, even despite it being his last night in Poland. Well, he now owes me a beer in Prague.)
1 comment:
To cover your thoughts in order:
1. This is a bit of a far-out concept in our modern service-based consumer world, but I don't think there should be any kind of food vending going on at Auschwitz. You can go hungry for an hour or two. Visit the site, live that experience, and eat when you get home.
2. I don't care if it's 50 C. There are some rules of dress that are appropriate for certain specialised circumstances and some that are clearly not.
3. I can just imagine how that woman got the job. "Well, we needed a tour guide, and she was amazingly familiar with the layout of the camp..."
I think my mum went to Auschwitz (it was either Auschwitz and Dachau, or just the latter)and she said there was an indescribable aura about the place. I salute your resolution in going there; I can't imagine it was easy.
Hen
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