We decided that a visit to Krakow was not complete without visiting Auschwitz.
The World War II Auschwitz-Birkenau complex is now a UNESCO World Heritage compound was about 1.5 hour drive away from Krakow. I have visited Dachau in Germany so had a rough idea of what to expect but this was my sisters fist visit to a concentration camp.
It is similar to a museum now with poignant exhibition halls, we were also able to visit the barracks, gas chambers and other buildings. Approximately 1.5 million people — mostly Jewish, Polish and Russian prisoners — were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau from 1940 onward, until both camps were liberated by the Allies in 1945.
I am glad that we visited, I think it’s important to know what and how it happened to empower the people of today to work toward preventing anything on this scale in the future. Although some of the information is graphic and distressing it seems they do try to be sensitive to the that were affected.
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