Jakey Jake

Arrived at 5am, having slept almost 10 hours. Phil and i were bleary eyed but we managed to fight our way through the crowd of touts and found our way to nathans villa hostel. When we arrived we met up with about 8 blokes and we all decided that since we were up so early in the moening wed go to auschwitz. Bloody sad is all i can say. There were actually 3 camps that made up auschwitz, the first having been around long since the second world war began, it housed political prisoners since the mid 30s. There were 2 main walls with electrified barbed wire which enclosed the camp. The atrocities that took place there were horrible, its were the angel of death (cant remember his name) performed brutal mutilations of young children who were twins. Due to the ’success’ of the camp, and the distance from any of the allied countries which made it much less likely to be bombed, the nazis began to build auschwitz 2, 3km from teh original, designed to house 200,000 but built only for 100,000 this is where most of the jews were gassed. I have to say how haunting it was to be standing in the coumpund where 5-6000 people a day were gassed and incinerated. The tragedy that something like this ever occured is beyond anything you can imagine. It certainly reminded me of Pol Pots devestation in Cambodia, but on an even grander scale.