Dictator and Terminator

23 May - Day 69

We had another late start today due to going to the double feature yesterday and finishing dinner after 10pm. The Dictator was very funny, and the Poles in the theatre LOLed as well despite getting their punchlines via subtitles. Unlike Spain, Italy and France, all foreign movies in Poland are subtitled, not dubbed. So they get both the visual and vocal (I was going to say oral, but you are going to get a lot of that if you go see that movie) acting. We did watch some TV that was dubbed in Polish, and the same guy did the vocals for all the actors (even the women). It was hilarious and weird, no wonder the Poles don't want their Hollywood blockbusters dubbed. So while we get maybe two foreign film festivals a year, the Poles get one everyday.

First stop of the day was the Polish Home Army Museum, a 30 min walk away from our apartment. Complete disappointment, the exhibitions were mainly fragments of aeroplanes, and toy models.

We lunched at this Polish self-service restaurant where you have to collect your food after paying and also return the dishes after eating. The food was delicious though, and very cheap. I had battered fish and potatoes, and Marcus cabbage rolls stuffed with meat and rice, and a salad. And a litre of beer, all for 42 ztoly ie $16.

 

We then joined the Jewish walking tour, again hosted by Dorotha from yesterday. This time we were taken through the Jewish quarters of Krakow. Before WW2, Krakow had 68,000 Jews. Because of the Nazis and Communist, there are now 200 known Jews today. A lot of people may not even know they are Jewish because their parents and grand parents did not tell them for protection from the anti-sematic governments over the years.

 

Dorotha spent a lot of time talking about Schindler (the Liam Neeson one, not the elevator company) and also the very cool student bars and cafes in this area. I took notice of the latter.

 

The thing with Schindler was that Spielberg made the movie and shot a lot of scenes in Krakow. Schindler saved 1,100 Jews. There is some debate over his motives for doing so, but lives were saved so who cares about the motive. The other good Nazi (yes Schindler was a Nazi party member) was a guy called John Rabe who saved about 200,000 Chinese from the massacre that the Japanese carried out in the late 1930s, the so called "Rape of Nanking"

 

We were shown a few areas where some familiar movie scenes were shot. I was very fascinated because I am a WW2 history buff. So, we will be returning to this area to visit Schindler's factory which in now a Jewish museum.

While everyone is bagging the Nazi Germans (and deservedly so), Russia's role in trying to eliminate the Poles in WW2 does not get as much attention.

I spotted this small memorial to the 5,000 Polish army officers executed by Russians in the Katyn forest. This atrocity was hushed up during WW2 because the Russians were part of the Allies.

The Vistula river was the scene of many ferocious battles between the Russians and Germans.

After this walking tour, we thanked and tipped Dorotha, and went back to the Polish self-service restaurant for a Jewish stew (me) and meat cutlet (Marcus). We covered about 10km today.

 

24 May - Day 70

We drove to Auschwitz today, about 60km away from Krakow. Between 10 am and 3 pm, you have to take a guided tour when you get there. Outside these hours you can guide yourself for free.

We got there at 11.30am and took the guided tour. Guided is better if you don't know about Nazi concentration and death camps. The former is where they work you to death, and the latter is where they just gas you (to death also). Our GPS guided us to the back entrance of the Auschwitz camp, so we saved 8 ztoly in parking. I retracted my colourful comments about the GPS after I found out.

Auschwitz is the German name for the Polish town of Oswiecim. There are two major camps in this area, the second one being Birkenau (Brzezinka in Polish).

All up between 1.1M and 1.5M people were murdered here. Men, women and children.

We saw spectacles, hair, shoes, luggage, combs, brushes collected from these poor souls.

We saw the gas chambers.

The chimneys where they dropped the cyanide, or cyclon B.

The crematoriums both intact and...

destroyed by fleeing Nazis.

The living conditions were horrific although eveything has been sanitised since.

These are the sleeping quarters, about eight per level, so 24 each bunk. You don't want to be in the bottom one because everyone above has dysentary, typhus and diarrhea.

Toilets are a mass production affair as well, and you are given a couple of minutes only, twice a day.

Although Marcus has been to Dachau, this guided tour has given him a bit more insight to this sad (so far) period of human (or should I say inhuman) history.