Memorials for Memorial Day in Kraków: Poland Part One

It's been a while since we have written a blog together, so here we are! Bryan's writing will look like this, while Katie's will look like this! Let's get this post started!

Friday, May 23: Arriving in Krakow

This Memorial Day Weekend, Katie and I decided to check out southern Poland for two reasons:

1) We've heard from numerous people who've raved about it

2) For some reason, Kraków, Poland, has round-trip direct flights from Seville, which really worked out for this four-day weekend.

Międzynarodowy Port Lotniczy im. Jana Pawła II Kraków-Balice

Although neither Katie nor I worked on Friday, we didn't fly out of Sevilla until 3:55 pm. (Those direct flights were worth it!) We landed in Kraków around 7:35 pm and made our way directly into the city via a €9 Bolt!

Tu Mexico Restaurant

Katie and I were quite hungry, and fortunately, just across the street from our apartment rental was Tu Mexico! We were greeted in the restaurant by the sweet sounds of a mariachi band, so we knew THIS was going to be a good meal. Katie and I split the beef tacos (in front of me) and the pork sopes, a traditional Mexican street food item consisting of a thick, deep-fried corn tortilla that is covered in toppings (in front of Katie!) The food did not disappoint!

Ok, Bryan didn't talk this up enough. This food was amazinggggggg!!!! Polish food, where? I'm just here for some delish Mexican cuisine sent from heaven. If you end up in Krakow- THIS is the place to eat, for sure!

It was also super cute to see Polish locals stop in to practice their Spanish with the mariachi band and restaurant workers. It was such a sweet sight and made the food taste that much better! We have been in-country for all of 2 hours, and I am loving the Polish people!

Saturday, May 24: Auschwitz Memorial & Schindler's Factory Museum

The next morning came very early with a 6 am meet-up to head to Auschwitz. This is our third concentration camp visit, having previously visited Terezin, north of Prague, and Dachau, north of Munich. I would argue that today's visit was the most memorable and horrifying of the three.

We arrived at Auschwitz around 7 am, where we waited in a tremendously long line for about one hour before entering as part of the first tour group of the day. And this is the line for those with tickets already! If you plan to visit Auschwitz on your own, I'd suggest getting in line well before 7 am. Our guide said some days they sell out before the museum officially opens at 8 am (and the tickets run about $70 each!)

"Arbeit Macht Frei" Sign Gate: Brama Arbeit Macht Frei

Around 8 am, we were met by our tour guide and made our way through the famous gate of Auschwitz I, bearing the words, "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("work sets you free"). One of the first things we learned about Auschwitz is that it isn't just one camp, but a collection of three camps, two of which we'll visit today: Auschwitz I, the main camp and administrative headquarters, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the largest camp, also known as the extermination camp, and Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a large labour camp.

Auschwitz I was originally a Polish Army barracks, but was converted to a prisoner of war camp by the Nazis in early 1940. The first prisoners were sent to Auschwitz in June 1940.

Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau: Miejsce Pamięci i Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau

During our tour, we entered a few of the "barracks," which have now been converted to museum exhibits. We were immediately put into shock, discovering the magnitude of the horrors that took place in Auschwitz. Although it's written below, I don't think it can be repeated enough:

• 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz, and 1.1 million people were murdered

• The first Jews were sent to Auschwitz in early 1942 as a part of the Nazi's "Final Solution" to the "Jewish Problem."

• 960,000 Jews were exterminated; 865,000 of them were killed immediately upon arrival at the camp. They were escorted off trains and immediately walked to their death in the camp's two main gas chambers.

• The Nazis didn't just kill Jews, they exterminated anyone they found inferior, including the Poles, Romani, and Slavic races.

As traumatizing as numbers can be, what truly put these statistics into perspective for Katie and I were the exhibits.

For those who have visited DC's Holocaust museum, you can't forget the display of the shoes of those who were killed across Europe. Standing in this room, we saw just a small collection of shoes from those killed here at Auschwitz. Nearby rooms displayed prosthetics that were confiscated from prisoners and sent back to Germany for reuse, an entire display of eyeglasses, and an entire wing of the building filled with luggage.

One area showcased what appeared to be a giant 18-wheeler truck bed, filled with kitchen pots and pans. People packed their meager belongings for transport to Auschwitz, where they were told they were being sent to live on the outskirts of towns. Since many 'undesirables' lived in ghettos of major cities, they were under the impression that they were moving to new "neighborhoods." Not sent to die.

Most heartbreaking was the one exhibit that we weren't allowed to photograph: of human hair. Taking up an entire wing of one of the barracks, with blacked-out windows and low lighting was a hallway filled with human hair. Some matted, some still in perfect braids, these mountains of human hair were saved from prisoners' shaven heads to be shipped back to German factories to be woven into ladies' stockings, military blankets and socks for their soldiers. A room full of shoes is one powerful image, but seeing human hair as a commodity will never leave my memory.

Each of the 22 buildings on Auschwitz I had four large barracks rooms, two toilet rooms (about 20 toilets in total), and one washroom. Each of these buildings housed between 700 and 1,000 prisoners. Given that the prisoners were only allotted small amounts of time to use the toilet, and there were 20 toilets for nearly 1,000 people, you can imagine the hygiene in the barracks had to be horrific. Many prisoners died from these poor conditions due to diseases like typhoid, measles, malaria, and dysentery.

Building 11- Experimentations & Executions Building

Of the 22 buildings in the camp, the most notorious was block 11, a prison within a prison. This is the building where numerous prisoners were "tried" and executed, and where the first murder by gassing occurred at the camp.

Walking through Building 11 was heartbreaking. These prisoners never received true trials; instead a few Nazi officials signed papers in a nearby office declaring death sentences to people daily without ever setting eyes on them. Then the prisoners, male or female, were led to a "changing room" and told to strip naked before being led to the outside execution wall, where two Nazi soldiers took turns shooting those on the day's docket.

2025: In today's news, people are being picked up off the streets by ICE agents and deported without any formal trials on US soil. These people, whether US citizens or not, never stepped foot in court. Well, some of them did- and they were forced into ICE vans outside the courthouse because they attended their own immigration court hearing. Mind you, the act of being present in the United States in violation of immigration laws alone is not a crime; it is a civil violation similar to jaywalking- and people are being forcibly removed from their homes without any formal hearing- just like the Nazis did to millions across Europe.

Auschwitz I- Gas Chamber

We learned that the Nazis used Zyklon B, a cyanide-based pesticide crystal, to gas prisoners; this crysal would release hydrogen cyanide into the air, causing agonizing pain, violent convulsions, and heart failure, normally killing people within 3-5 minutes, but could take up to 45 minutes. In Auschwitz I, the crematorium coupled as a gas chamber as well; by May of 1942 the Nazis were killing and burning nearly 340 bodies a day within this crematorium. The silence amongst our tour while walking through was LOUD.

And all this was just at Auschwitz I. Known as the model for all other labor camps, Auschwitz I looked "nice" with its brick buildings, shaded areas, and green spaces. Little did people know that this place was mainly used for promotional filming and testing. Our next stop was the true goal of the Nazi's labor and extermination camps.

Miejsce Pamięci i Muzeum Auschwitz II-Birkenau

We finished up our tour at Auschwitz I around 9:30 am, where we boarded back onto our bus and made our way 10 minutes outside of the city to Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

Auschwitz II Historical Gate: Brama główna byłego obozu Birkenau

We pulled up to the famous train tracks at Auschwitz-Birkenau around 9:45. The largest of the Nazi concentration camps, this is the site where over 1 million people just ceased to exist.

I don't think people realize how big Auschwitz-Birkenau truly was. It imprisoned 125,000 people in the work camp areas, but was under constant construction, intending to house triple the number of prisoners. In the photo below, you can get a mental image of the camp's layout:

Red: gas chambers & crematoriums

Pink: Women's Camp

Blue: Men's Camp & Hungarian prisoner camp

Yellow: expansion area- while never completed, this area was intended to triple the camp's population

Green: Storage (stolen prisoner belongings were stored here before being shipped back to Germany for "reuse"- some of those items are now on display at Auschwitz I)

Brzezinka

As we walked into the center of the camp, we were met by a train car that was donated by the Hungarian government as a memorial for all of the Hungarian Jews murdered at Auschwitz. This was the area where prisoners would be herded off the cattle cars and sorted by age and gender; anyone who was deemed unfit to work (most women, young children, and people with disabilities or injuries) was sent immediately to the gas chambers. Remember what I said earlier in the post; of the 960,000 Jews who were murdered here, 865,000 of them were murdered via the gas chambers as soon as they arrived.

Auschwitz-Birkenau Gas Chambers 

As we made our way to the back of the camp, we came upon large piles of rubble; that's because when the Nazis knew that the Soviet Army was close to Auschwitz and they would be overrun, they destroyed the gas chambers and crematoriums to try and cover up their heinous crimes.

Over the years of using the gas chambers, the Nazis perfected their means of mass murder. With the help of German engineers, they learned that by packing over 1,200 people into a single chamber, the bodies would increase the room's temperature. Once packed to the brim, they would lock the doors and immediately turn off the lights, causing people to stress out more and increase their heart and breathing rates. With this increased temperature, the Zyklon B crystals became active quicker and even more potent. Within 45 minutes of the doors closing, twelve hundred people would be dead.

The five crematoriums on site allowed them to burn over 5,500 bodies in 24 hours. With some quick math, you probably note that they could gas many more people than they could burn in a day, thus leading to mass graves and fire pits daily.

Women's Camp

The final part of our tour was of the women's camp. Below, you will notice that many of the remaining buildings are held up with scaffolding or wooden structures. Since Auschwitz was built by prisoners, they didn't have true craftsmen teaching them how to build- instead, it was prisoners trying to figure it out as they went, using old brick and mortar from destroyed buildings. The memorial is working to stabilize the remaining buildings as part of the museum, but all of the buildings from the men's camp have fallen and can only be recognized by the still-standing chimneys (which were never used).

We were able to tour one of the barracks to get an understanding of the living conditions for those "lucky" enough to live past the train separation and join the labor part of Auschwitz's camp. Each barrack could house over 600 women, with up to seven women on each bunk. None of these barracks had electricity or running water, so troughs were used as toilets that would empty into latrines on the edges of the camp.

Cleaning the latrines was considered a desirable job at Auschwitz. Why was this? Because the smell was so foul, the SS guards wouldn't go near the latrines, so the women "fortunate" enough to have this job typically avoided brutal punishment. You read that right: women wanted to clean the waste-filled latrines because it got them away from SS guards while they worked.

As we left Auschwitz, we were too stunned for words. Seeing the place formed through hatred and prejudice that led to so much death and torture is hard to fathom. But then we look at where the United States is: in terms of prejudiced-filled rhetoric, problematic and divisive leadership, and outright hatred for "others," it is scary.

We don't have death camps in the country, but we are quick to send people to El Salvador prisons without any form of trial. What happened to due process?

Krakó Slow Wines

After an hour bus ride back into Krakow, Katie and I were starting to get hungry. We had approximately 45 minutes before we toured Schindler's Factory, so we made the short walk up the street to Krakow Slow Wines, where we enjoyed beer, cider, and shared chinkali (a Georgian-style boiled dumpling filled with meat and cheese) and a Hungarian sausage.

Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory: Fabryka 'Emalia' Oskara Schindlera

Now, to be clear, this isn't exactly what we were expecting when we booked the tour of Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory. We thought we were going to be touring his factory and learning mostly about him and how he saved 1,200 Jewish lives at the end of the Holocaust, but his museum had been converted to a museum about Nazi occupation of Krakow. Fortunately, this was a guided tour, because between all of the photos, videos, sounds, and plaques, this museum was a bit of sensory overload. So here's what we learned about Kraków:

Poland was invaded by the Nazis on September 1, 1939 and the Soviets on September 17, 1939. The last Polish troops surrendered on October 6, 1939, leading to Nazi occupation of western Poland and Soviet occupation of eastern Poland.

Immediately following the surrender, the Nazi government released propaganda to the German population showing Polish people as ignorant and inferior, and stating that they needed to be saved from themselves. A large number of German citizens would move to Kraków, forcing locals to move from their homes.

The official language was converted to German, and anyone caught speaking Polish would be unjustly convicted of a crime. The Nazis also tore down statues of famous Poles, renamed city streets and squares, and barred the celebration of Polish holidays. Almost overnight, Krakow went from being a Polish city to a Nazi flag-filled German city.

In the autumn of 1939, Jagiellonian University, a public university in Kraków and the oldest university in Poland, chose to open its doors for another academic year starting in November 1939. Even with the current upheaval happening across the city, Jagiellonian University knew there was power in learning. Before the beginning of the year, the Gestapo chief in Kraków demanded that all university professors attend his lecture on the German plans for Polish education.

On the evening of November 3, 1939, 184 Polish professors attended this "lecture." As the speaking was to begin, the doors burst open and all 184 professors were arrested and sent to concentration camps in southwest Poland and Germany.

How do you control people? You take away their brightest minds and the people most likely to speak out. By eliminating the Polish intellectual elite, the Gestapo was able to silence the city.

2025: Universities are losing funding if they refuse the current presidential policies. Carla Hayden, the librarian of Congress, was fired because she "pursued DEI and, for putting inappropriate books in the library for children." By attacking the brightest minds, governments can compel quiet and rule-following.

One of the larger exhibits in the museum portrayed what life was like in the Kraków Jewish Ghetto. In early 1940, the Jewish Ghetto was established, and all Polish Jews in Krakow were required to move into this section of the city to "cleanse" other neighborhoods.

This opened up housing for Germans to come and "improve" the city, while also containing all Jewish families to one monitored area. Keep in mind, this is also why so many people boarded trains to labor camps: they were told the trains were taking them to new neighborhoods just for Jewish communities. Little did they know, those trains led to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

If people wanted to leave the Jewish ghetto, they had to show papers. Without papers, any Jewish person could be hauled into a truck and never be seen again.

2025: A father in Charlotte, NC was arrested after dropping his child off at school for not having proper identification to show ICE officials. Los Angeles held protests across the city and blocked ICE agents from entering a Home Depot to scout out illegal immigrants based on their physical looks alone.

It's harrowing to see history trying to repeat itself.

During the tour, we had an opportunity to visit Oskar Schindler's actual office. The only original piece remaining is the large enamel map of Europe that Schindler used to track Allied & Axis movements throughout the continent. Although he was a Czechoslovakian citizen, he spied on his country for the Nazi military intelligence community, collecting and reporting information on rail systems, military bases, and troop movements. He was arrested in 1936, but was later released following the Munich Agreement, which allowed Germany to occupy Czechoslovakia without a conflict.

Fast forward years later, Schindler was a businessman who exploited all opportunities afforded to him, so when he moved to Nazi-occupied Krakow to open an enamel factory, he utilized imprisoned Jews and Poles as his primary workforce to capitalize on profit. Now, this isn't intended to be an Oskar Schindler slander post, but a story of redemption.

Near the end of the war, when Soviet forces were pushing into Nazi territory, Schindler knew that his Jewish workers were destined for the gas chambers if he didn't intervene. Schindler convinced SS commander Amon Göth that he would convert his factory to produce anti-tank grenades and move it to Brünnlitz (located in the Czech Republic) if he was able to take his workers with him.

With a compiled list of over 1,000 Jews and 200 other inmates, Schindler was able to save numerous people from certain death. After passing away in 1974, Schindler was buried in Jerusalem on Mount Zion, possibly as the only former Nazi Party member to receive such an honor.

So, while Schindler wasn't a good person (womanizer, Nazi, ran his factory with slave labor) he did choose to save 1,200 people from death at the end of the war. Even bad people can be redeemed.

Whew. That was a heavy day. If you plan to visit Krakow, I recommend breaking up the memorial visit and the Schindler Factory tour into two separate days. It was a lot of gloomy information and heavy topics for one day...

But take a deep breath. Pause and take a break from this intense blog post and get ready because Bryan and I aren't done yet!

Empik Bookstore

After our tour dropped us off close to the city center, Bryan made the executive decision that we were going to find our Polish Harry Potter book. After four stores that failed our quest, we eventually lucked out at Empik Bookstore! This makes book 33 for the collection! You know I can't walk into a bookstore without spotting other popular titles, and my favorite find was Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale, published in Polish.

Starbucks

During our bookstore search, we also swung by a Starbucks to get the Poland travel cup for our collection!

This was our first look around Krakow's city center, and I couldn't help but pause to snap a few photos. We also crossed through the main city's square and spotted local artists! Bryan would probably say it took me too long to choose a watercolor for our collection, but when there were 4 different people with many different styles on display, it took me a while to narrow down our choice!

In the end, we finished our afternoon search with a Starbucks cup, a Polish book, and a painting for our collections! Woohoo! This was a super successful afternoon!

House of Beer

Then it was time for beer. My feet were killing me, and Bryan was ready for a drink after the day's heavy topics, and House of Beer met those needs! I was especially happy to have several Goses and Ciders on tap for me!!!

Pierogarnia Krakowiacy

A few drinks in (and nachos to hold us over), we figured we should try the Polish classic, Pierogis! Together we shared the traditional pork-filled pierogis and a vegetarian option of spinach and feta pierogis. These boiled dough-filled dumplings were ok, but we both agreed we prefer Japanese gyozas over the Polish dumplings.

Full and quite exhausted, we made our way back to the apartment to crash and burn for the evening!

Although it may not be the most exciting or peaceful thing to do while on vacation, I think it's important to visit places like Auschwitz, Dachau, and Terezin. Seeing what humanity is capable of when hatred and fear of our differences are allowed to fester. I'll end the post on a quote from George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it."

I also think it's important to take a step back and recognize that our 2025 America is starting to mirror 1930s-40s Germany. Now is the time to see these tactics and speak out. Bryan and I are proud to see our country host protests across the country this weekend. Now let's keep that momentum going and make changes in our government, hold people accountable, and bring back the freedoms for all people in America.

Thanks for tagging along. Rest assured, the remaining days of our trip are not this somber.

Na zdrowie.

Katie and Bryan