polska

well we left germany behind and into the land of the plains people - the polonians

we headed south into lower silesia and stayed in bolawiesiec - a small town which is the centre of the ceramic (read blue and white) industry in poland.

we sampled zummt food for cold weather - sour soup with egg and sausage (zurek), potato pancakes with sour cream and pierogi a polish version of ravioli.

weather got rainy so we headed to the mountain - sklarska poreba - google it - and stayed in nice pension taling with the family.

tuesday was rainy and foggy and chairlift to mt sreniza not working so we made haste for ozweicim - which has another much more sinister name.

 

we set up the tent at a catholic centre for peace and dialogue and froze thru the night. i got up at 4.20am for some reason and it was like daylight.

all through the night we could hear trains - some, who knows, still are hauling miles of human filled cattle cars.

 

and so to visit both the auschwitz and birkenau extermination camps.

you probably remember the statistics - around 1.3 million jews blotted out through the gas chambers in these camps.

roma were on the extermination hit list as well as soviets, religious dudes such as jwitnesses and homosexuals.

in addition to infoprmation we has seen in germany at mittelbau and the jewish museum we now had a polish perspective - as oppressed people who made up a sizable group in the concentrations camps.

there is little to say

how can you understand the purposeful dehumanising and extermination of a people group - and those who did it had been trained to be cruel and relentless and violent.

 

we drove to krakow last night, stazing at camping nr 46 smok and today have wandered the town and just hit the internet after a concert at the krakow philharmina with the krakow phil choir. thez performed an amaying piece called Sleep by eric whittaker (USA) as well as rossini, elgar, schuman, faure, brahms. the concert was 10 bucks ea. tomorrow night there is a mendolssohn concert - symphony 1 and 3 and piano concerto - thats a lot of sleeping!

 

we will wander some more tomorrow in kazimierz - the old jewish area.

 

crojcsz and dzjejcn