Holocaust Tour

Dep. GATWICK on CENTRAL WINGS C0 0254 at 10.15; arr. KRAKOW at 13.35

KRAKOW is the most important city in Polish history, the ancient royal capital, with striking royal residences like Wawel Castle; and the medieval Sukiennice, a vast cloth hall. The Old Town has many squares with gothic, renaissance and baroque buildings that are original, unlike in Warsaw where the old centre is pastiche or rebuilt. [Photos above - AUSCHWITZ: watch towers and entry tower over track leading to BIRKENAU]

Taxi to the central (in the Old Town) WENTZL HOTEL.

WENTZL HOTEL

Tour of KRAKOW’s Old Town. 70,000 Jews lived in and around Krakow before WW2, mostly in the suburb of Kazimierz, on the north bank of the Vistula. Visit the small Jewish Quarter still in its original state. The ghetto, Podgorze (15 streets and 320 houses), destroyed in 1943, lay across the bridge over the river on the southern side. Fragments of the former ghetto wall are still visible, as well as the pharmacy ‘Under the Eagle’ (now a small ghetto museum), which was within the ghetto itself. Its owner was the only Pole living in the ghetto. Krakow stages an annual Jewish Culture Festival. Among the sights are - the Old Synagogue, the Remuh synagogue and cemetery, the Mikvah, the synagogue of Wolf Popper, the Kowea Itim Tora house of prayer, the high synagogue, the synagogue of Isaac, the Kupa synagogue, Nowy square (the ritual slaughterhouse for poultry), Meiselsa and Miodowa Streets (the Temple synagogue and cemetery). And there is Plaszow Concentration Camp – now a memorial site – 10 kms. outside Krakow.

PLASZOW CONCENTRATION CAMP outside Krakow – made famous by Schindler’s List

Schindler's List made Plaszow famous, and its sadistic Commandant, Amon Goeth, infamous. Plaszow was originally a penal labour camp. Perversely, executions at extermination camps had to be approved by Berlin but not at labour camps, which came under local SS authority. Thus Goeth got away with (literally) murder.

In March 1941, the Jews of Krakow were herded into the walled ghetto in Podgorze. Deportations began in March 1942. On October 28, 1942, the biggest took place. Many children were taken from their parents, the sick, invalids, orphans (with their carers) shot or deported. On this day 4,500 Jews were deported to Belzec, 600 were killed on the spot. Some Jews still thought that ‘deportation’ meant a better life in the Ukraine; shortly after this deportation, letters from the Lwow ghetto were sent to Krakow, explaining their true fate at Belzec.

GOETH at Plaszow

The ghetto was destroyed in early March 1943 (supervised by Goeth) and the remaining 6000 Jews transported to Plaszow on March 13 and 14, 1943. The Schindler Jews at first lived in Plaszow and walked to his enamelware factory each day. Schindler lived in an apartment (still there) close to his factory. Schindler bribed Goeth to let his workers move into barracks which he built in the courtyard of his factory. Although the Nazis provided his workforce with food, Schindler bought much more on the black market.

Goeth was Commandant of Plaszow from February 1943 until September 1944 when he was arrested by the SS for corruption. After the war he was tried in Poland for the murder of 2000 Jews, killed during the destruction of the Podgorze ghetto, and for 8000 deaths in Plaszow. At his trial in Kracow in 1946 Goeth was found guilty. He appealed for mercy but it was denied. Amon Goeth was hanged on September 13, 1946, not far from his camp. His last act was a Nazi salute.

The first deportation of Jews from Krakow, 30 May - 8 June 1942. They were shipped in cattle trucks to Belzec death camp in Eastern Poland, where 500,000 died or were killed until the camp was decommissioned in March 1943. Ghetto wall in background

Visit the Wawel Castle and the Cathedral, resting place of many of Poland’s monarchs. The Wawel is the religious, spiritual and patriotic heart of Poland and the most splendid of her castles, the seat of her kings for over 500 years. The Cathedral dates from 1320-64. The golden dome visible outside is that of the Sigismund Chapel (1519-31, by Berecci), perhaps the finest renaissance chapel outside Italy. The Royal Castle (1507-36) was also built by Berecci. It contains beautiful 3 storey arcades surrounding an inner courtyard. The state rooms house the world’s most important collection of Flemish tapestries (136). The castle was last used as a seat of government by the Nazis Hans Frank, Governor-General of Poland, and his deputy, Seyss-Inquart, both of whom were quite properly hanged at Nuremberg.

Frank

Dinner in Old Town. [The Old Town began in the 13th century after the Tartar invasions. It took two centuries to build a defensive wall around the town, complete with 47 towers and 7 main entrance gates plus moat. From 1822-1847 the Republic of Krakow demolished the walls and filled in the moat as a nod to municipal modernisation. The city is bisected by the Royal Way, the route followed by the coronation procession of the kings of Poland from the Church of St.Florian through to the Wawel and then on to the Paulite Church Na Skalce.]

AUSCHWITZ 1945: Main Gate (‘WORK SETS YOU FREE’)

FRIDAY SEPT. 29

9.00 a.m. Leave by taxi for guided tour of AUSCHWITZ and BIRKENAU.

Auschwitz was a vast complex with three large camps and dozens of satellite camps. The original camp, Auschwitz I, was built in 1940 mainly for Polish political prisoners. During the next few years, the extermination centre at Birkenau (Auschwitz II - 2 kms away) and the industrial work camp at Monowitz (Auschwitz III) were constructed. At Auschwitz-Birkenau about 1.5 million people died or were killed, most of them Jews murdered in one of the four large gas chambers at Birkenau. They came primarily from Hungary and the pre-war Polish territories. Of non-Jews, 140,000 were Poles, 20,000 Gypsies, 15,000 Soviet p.o.w.s and perhaps 15,000 other nationalities. Many died from starvation, exhaustion, disease, ‘scientific’ experiments, and random acts of brutality. Of the 7000 Nazi camp functionaries, only 1000 were tried after the war. A rail line runs directly into Birkenau; the ramp still stands where Josef Mengele selected those to live (briefly) and work, and those to die (immediately). As the Russian army advanced in late 1944, the gas chambers and crematoria were blown up and tens of thousands of prisoners were sent on death marches to Germany.

At Auschwitz, passing under the inscription ‘ARBEIT MACHT FREI’ [‘WORK SETS YOU FREE’] visit exhibitions in surviving prison blocks, and museum.

After lunch to Birkenau [Auschwitz II – about 2 kms away].

PLAN OF AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU today, and environs

• A: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (site of Auschwitz I). The visitor reception centre is located in the building adjacent to the parking lot
• B: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (site of Auschwitz II - Birkenau)
• C: Railway station; by Globe Hotel
• D: International Youth Meeting House
• E: PKS bus stop
• F: Dialogue and Prayer Centre
• P: Parking

6.00 p.m. Return to Krakow for dinner in Old Town.

SATURDAY SEPT. 30

OSKAR SCHINDLER

To Oskar Schindler Museum. The enamel and tinware factory owned by Oskar Schindler, the German who saved more than 1,000 Jews from the gas chambers, was recently transformed from a derelict ruin into a museum, after international pressure and following the owner’s death in 2004. The ‘Emalia’ factory in a suburb of Krakow, featured in Spielberg's Schindler's List, was crumbling and tourists, often Schindler survivors or their relatives, were turned away because the structure was dangerous. The Oskar Schindler Museum includes files on all those who owe their lives to Schindler, plus a collection of Schindler saucepans donated by a local doctor. The rooms where Schindler's workers made the pans - and later munitions for the German army – is now an art gallery.

Schindler moved the Krakow plant to a new factory in Brunnlitz, then in Czechoslovakia, in early 1945. He died in poverty in 1974 and is buried in Israel. Poles are undecided about him. Some regard him as a Nazi and industrialist who just wanted to keep his underpaid workforce alive. And he was German, not an asset in Poland. A display at the start of the exhibition reflects the unease: ‘He employed Jewish workers…because they were the cheapest labour force. He grew rich leading an easy and pleasant life. What made this reveller decide to save these workers? No one knows.’ However, the plaque on the outside wall quotes a Jewish saying: ‘Whoever saves one life, saves the entire world.’

SCHINDLER’S FACTORY

Between lunch and dinner in the Old Town, further sites will be visited.

SUNDAY OCT. 1, 2006

See KRAKOW sites not visited on first or third day, including the Czartoryski Palace/Museum, ul.Pijarska 15, which was converted in the 19th century from a number of burghers' houses.

Czartoryski Palace/Museum Tel: 422 55 66 www.muzeum-czartoryskich.krakow.pl 10:00-19:00 except:
Mon: Closed
Tue: 10:00-16:00
Thu: 10:00-16:00
Sun: 10:00-15:00

The collection was founded in the early 19th century and contains Greek, Egyptian and Etruscan art, and also several major paintings including Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine (c.1485) and Rembrandt's Landscape with the Good Samaritan (1638). The Nazis seized the collection and took it to Germany; not all the exhibits have been recovered. Early lunch.

Dep. KRAKOW on BA2775 at 14.45
Arr. GATWICK at 16.15

AUSCHWITZ 1945: liberation

AUSCHWITZ: Why the Allies failed to identify the Extermination Complex, or act

In 1978 aerial photos of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Complex were discovered in the US National Archives that had been overlooked during and after the war. The photo interpreters had failed to spot sinister signs – the large number of cattle trucks on the Birkenau sidings, the obvious lack of industrial installations within the camp, the four separately secured extermination areas, each containing unique facilities - an undressing room, a gas chamber and a crematorium. The problem was partly one of military intelligence targets – photographic interpreters had been told specifically to look for progress on the construction of the I.G. Farben Synthetic Fuel and Rubber Plant – so they ignored Auschwitz-Birkenau. No photo interpreters were assigned to detailed interpretation of concentration camps themselves. Aerial reconnaissance of such camps was a by-product of the reconnaissance of nearby strategic installations.

The daily intake of the Allied Central Interpretation Unit was about 25,000 negatives and 60,000 prints. So some images were scanned all too briefly.

Photo interpreters depended on precedence or existing knowledge about an installation. They were never told to look for gas chambers and crematoria. There was no precedence for such genocide. Interpreters were not privy to intelligence seeping through about the Holocaust (from escaped prisoners and intercepts). And equipment was primitive. Photo interpreters used stereoscopes that magnified only four times the original imagery.

The true horror of Auschwitz was confirmed following the escape of two prisoners in April 1944, and two more a month later. Their testimonies formed the basis of documents known as the Auschwitz Protocols. By June 1944, Jewish groups appealed to Roosevelt and Churchill to bomb the rail lines or the gas chambers. But arguments rumbled on throughout the summer. Proposals to drop weapons into the camp were briefly considered but abandoned. Military commanders said a precision strike had almost no chance of success. But no thorough study of the issue was made. A sneering tone about ‘wailing Jews’ appears in some FO documents. Bombing Auschwitz was not a priority. If Allied POWs were being exterminated it surely would have been. Eventually specialists were ordered to plan for bombing Auschwitz-Birkenau, but the Air Ministry, Bomber Command and the 8th USAAF said there were no aerial photos of the complex. In fact, they were available at RAF Medmenham [SEE PHOTOS WITHIN THIS ITINERARY]. No search was ever instituted. By the time the Soviet Army reached Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, the Birkenau death camps had been photographed at least 30 times.

Nicholas A Bird
Royal United Services Institute