In Krakow: A Guided Tour of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp

When we decided to make this a part of our itinerary, we did not know what to expect. Yes, of course, Krakow is a beautiful place by itself, the Old Town square, The Royal Palace...But the killing fields are also associated with Krakow. The Auschwitz and Birkenau Concentration camps,the two largest German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940 - 1945) operated by the Nazis; UNESCO World Heritage sites.

After keeping our luggage in the cloak room of P and J Apartments, we headed towards the Old Town Square to locate the meeting point of our 7 hour Local guided Tour, "Discover Cracow". Tickets had already been bought online through Viator. We bought some packed lunch from a Burger King near our hotel, as we knew it was a full Day trip.

We board our mini van and fly past beautiful countryside cottages. We reach the place. As we reach the place, we see thousands of tourists thronging the site, but a sombre silence amongst them all.

We put on our headphones and follow our soft voiced Local Guide as she leads us into Auschwitz. The Germans found the death camp #AuschwitzBikernau after expelling the poor villagers. The picture below extreme right shows the various places all over the globe, where Jews and other nationality prisoners were deported to these concentration camps

A place somewhere so cut off, so that the world would never know the way they conducted these death stories , almost like an orchestra. What kind of a depraved human mind would think of such a thing...defies all humanity. In the second picture below: the camp orchestra had to assemble here, to play marches, while the prisoners filed past, only so that they could keep count.

Not a thousand words can tell of the horrifying conditions of ordinary human beings for no fault of theirs; but only the fact that they belonged to certain regions or if they defied the dictates of the #SS . As thousands of Jews and other nationalities were brought in through trains, where men, women, children were separated. The so called "stronger people", only a handful would be kept back, while all the rest, especially women, children, the old, the sick were sent to gas chambers. Of course, they were not told so. They were told they were going for a medical check up and disinfectant showers. Fake shower heads were also created to validate their point, so as not to create panic.

Beaten and intimidated by SS dogs, about 2000 of them were crammed and locked into 210 square meter rooms and Zyklon Poisson gas was poured into the chambers. Bodies were stripped of gold teeth and jewelry. Hair was cut off. Personal documents were destroyed. All a part of a cold blooded calculated annihilation of the dignity of human body and spirit.

The whole place was fortified by electrified barbed wires which acted as deterrents. And those who dared to escape were tried by the #Gestapo where they would be beaten and tortured such that they couldn't live to tell their tales. Look at the Divine Law of Justice. Here itself was tried one of their Commanders after the camp was liberated and hanged to death by the Polish National Tribunal.

Birkenau: Here the prisoners would be brought in from various parts of the globe almost like cattle in these wagons, where the weak:women, children,elderly, sick people would be separated at the platform itself and led to #gaschambers

That nature could have witnessed so much hatred and cruelty; that it needs only one match to start a fire that kills and annihilates the human spirit itself: This is a chapter in history that everyone should know, so that human beings are never divided because of color, race, religion and creed. Some beautiful villages converted to killing fields to feed the hunger for

what? Power? Sense of Immortality? Where are they now? Money? Fudamental darkness?