The Day the Royal British Legion met Hitler - Interesting Video

[flylock shox]

Originally Posted by 3 Justin 3

Have you been to Auschwitz? It isn't like a university at all. It is essentially how it was in 1945 minus the Nazis.

I was just there a few months ago.

When I got off the bus I thought I was in the wrong place. I was expecting it to be a frightening hellhole. Instead I found a series of lovely old brick buildings surrounded by willow trees. It was quiet and peaceful (until the busloads of tourists showed up).

The atrocities committed there just aren't evident from the architecture or the general surroundings.

Birkenau (Auschwitz II) on the other hand, is just a death field. Unlike Auschwitz I, f you were to tour Birkenau, there's only one conclusion you could draw about its purpose.

In fact, in addition to starting out as an army barracks, Auschwitz I served as a hospital after it was liberated.

[3 Justin 3]

Originally Posted by flylock shox

I was just there a few months ago.

When I got off the bus I thought I was in the wrong place. I was expecting it to be a frightening hellhole. Instead I found a series of lovely old brick buildings surrounded by willow trees. It was quiet and peaceful (until the busloads of tourists showed up).

The atrocities committed there just aren't evident from the architecture or the general surroundings.

Birkenau (Auschwitz II) on the other hand, is just a death field. Unlike Auschwitz I, f you were to tour Birkenau, there's only one conclusion you could draw about its purpose.

In fact, in addition to starting out as an army barracks, Auschwitz I served as a hospital after it was liberated.

Birkenau was just a field. One massive field. There was like 2-3 buildings still up (I believe), everything else they destroyed.

I have been to Dachau as well, and it was half destroyed, half intact. The intact buildings were all the death chambers, and the gas chamber.

[flylock shox]

That's the awful thing about Birkenau - it is basically just a field (although there are several buildings still standing, including the guard tower, but the gas chambers were all leveled by the Nazis during their abandonment of the camp).

If you didn't have Nazis killing you, Auschwitz I would be a perfectly pleasant place to live really. At Birkenau, even if the Nazis weren't killing you, you would be done for anyway. How anyone lasted more than a week there is beyond me. It's a despairing place.

From a "holocaust tourism" vantage point, I found Birkenau much more impressive than Auschwitz I, and would urge anyone who goes to make sure they don't skip it (it's only 10 minutes away by free bus).

[3 Justin 3]

The tour I did included Auschwitz and Birkenau. The part I found creepy was the weather that day was cloudy, cold, and rained a bit. Like it couldn't have got more eerie.

[flylock shox]

I think the double tour is standard - but a lot of tourists skip Birkenau for whatever reason.

When I went it was about 35 Celsius, and I circumnavigated about half the camp on foot. By the end of it I was worried about heatstroke and really thirsty. I cannot imagine what it must have been like to be there, weak, hopeless, doing forced labour in blazing heat, freezing cold, with nothing approaching real shelter anywhere. And no hope of escape. Awful.

The one thing I did like about it (again from a tourist perspective) was that you could easily escape from everyone there: no guided tour, no tourists. Just by yourself, free to explore the remains of the camp. After the first half hour, I was totally alone meandering around. It made for a much more personal experience. I guess that was the major difference between the two: Auschwitz I feels kind of like a museum (of course, it is a museum) whereas Birkenau was an immersive experience.

Speaking of eerie experiences, I was the only one on the bus from Katowice to Oswiecim when I went there (the bus could have taken about 50 people) and I arrived an hour before any of the tours. So for about 15 minutes or so, it was just me and the museum.