About 3 weeks ago I was in Krakow and on the way home I stopped at Auschwitz. It's big and spread out and there are no benches, so I didn't get to see that much, but I saw as much as I could given my limited walking ability. I did see the interior of some of the barracks near the entrance, as well as the original gas chamber and crematorium. What struck me was how ordinary it all looked. If you didn't know what happened there, you might think this was just a normal work camp like many of the prison systems have, except, of course, for the gas chamber and crematorium. Birkenau was even less accessible, so I just looked at it from the front and didn't try to walk around it. It's smaller, but you can tell it was a death camp with all of the gas chambers and crematoria. It was very desolate looking. The Poles are doing an excellent job of maintaining these two places. It's important to remember that 6 million Poles were killed during the Holocaust. Three million of the Jews were Polish Jews since Poland had the largest pre-war population of Jews of any country in Europe and then 3 million Polish Christians, mostly Catholics, were also killed. St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish Catholic priest, was martyred at Auschwitz. He voluntarily took the place of a Polish man with a family in a punishment selection and is called the "Martyr of Charity." There is no charge for admission, but they do accept donations.
