My trip in Poland by Thomas

Since the last post, we planned a trip to Poland to visit and meet some friends. We flew to Poland on May 9 and explored Warsaw with Malo. Warsaw is a great city, but it felt strange to visit because of the skyscrapers of big brands like Google and Netflix. Between those huge towers you can still find small flats, which really shows the inequality between residents.

The next day, Sunday, we took an overnight train to Kraków. Our goal was to visit Auschwitz, which is about an hour from Kraków by train. We hadn’t bought tickets online, so we woke up at 5 a.m. to get to Kraków early and try our luck before the memorial opened at 7:30 a.m. Finally, we managed to get tickets for a French-guided tour, since all the English tours were already fully booked.

We started the tour at 10 a.m. at Auschwitz I. For two hours, we walked through the barracks. The atmosphere was eerie and silent; we could only hear our guide. Seeing all the belongings collected by the Nazis was both incredible and horrifying. The strangest fact was that the Nazis gathered seven tonnes of hair to make textiles.

At 1 p.m., we went on to Birkenau, about 3 km from Auschwitz I. The size of the camp covers 160 hectares. At its peak, around 90,000 people were held there at once, and over 6,000 bodies were burned each day. Now the area is green and peaceful, but survivors’ testimonies tell us that in the winter of 1943 prisoners endured temperatures as low as –30 °C. Under those conditions, survival was almost impossible: the average lifespan was just 3–6 months, and 90 % of those sent to Birkenau died within days of arrival. One of the most chilling aspects was the experimentation carried out by Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death.”

I had wanted to visit this place for a long time—partly because of my grandparent wo flew before Auswitchz and partly to honour the victims. In total, between 1.1 and 1.5 million people died there.

Afterwards, we returned to Kraków to explore the city. Kraków is such a beautiful place—far more picturesque than Warsaw. We visited the castle, and the whole weekend was incredible. I really love Poland!