Tyskland_Polen

My trip to Poland and Germany

Day 1. Saturday 13.09.03. Nesoddtangen- Karlskrona
After a night on the night express, we finally came to Oslo. From there we drove in a "travel for peace bus" to Nesoddtangen where we should meet the other class we should be travelling with. Luckily all the pupils were very nice, and we soon got in good contact. We had a lot of fun together trying to talk the others dialect.

We drove all day through Norway and Sweden until we came to Karlskrona at 21.00, where we took the Stena Line ferry to Gdynia in Poland. We ( I, Venke, Marthe and Monica) slept in a nice cabin, and we all were excited to enter Poland.

Day 2. Sunday 14.09.03. Gdynia- Jaworznow
After a good night's sleep on the Stena Line ferry, we came to Poland where the sun was shining and the wind was hot. We all knew that this day would contain a lot of driving, but we didn't care. We were busy talking to our new friends, watching videos, listening to music, and looking out at the beautiful landscape. In my inner eye, I had imagined Poland as grey, cold and a country with a lot of slum, but I was positively surprised that I was wrong. Poland was a country I became fond of. I can't remember that I saw a single mountain. I could see many kilometres of cultivated land, tall trees that were waving in the sun and here and there houses in bright turquoise.

On our way we stopped in a humble town called Torun. Copernicus was born here, and a tall statue of him stood in the middle of the city beside a beautiful brick church. We had one of our best meals (after my opinion) during the whole trip in Poland there, at a restaurant called Phoenix. We had beef with chips and salad that tasted terrific.

After some hours in Torun we went back to the bus and kept on driving until we came to Jaworznow at nine p.m. where we should camp for the night. I got a nice hotel room that I shared with Marthe, Monica and Venke.

Day 3. Monday 15.09.03. Jaworznow-Oswiecim-Cracow
I got up at 5 this morning to take a shower, (the reason why I had to take a shower so early, was that the other girls also should have one) something I got used to during the trip. Each time we got to a nice bathroom, we thought we had to take a shower because we didn't know when we would have the chance next time. If we had known that the quality on the hotels should be so good all along, I'm sure we could have saved us some early mornings.

Howerver, this day was the day someone had looked forward to, and others had dreaded to meet. It was the day when we should visit the concentration camps Auschwitz and Birkenau. I had looked forward to this day, because I wanted to see with my own eyes what had happened.

First stop was Auschwitz, the biggest centre for mass extermination for Jews in Europe. We started by watching a 20 minutes long film about the living conditions in the concentration camps during Second World War. It was grouse to see the out starved people, and the mass graves . In a way it was good that we saw the video, it made it easier to picture to ourselves all the horrible things that had happened at the places we were to see.

After the film, we got introduced to our female Polish guide. She spoke very low, so we really had to concentrate to hear what she was saying. She started the guiding tour by taking us through the gate to the main camp that the prisoners had to pass every day on their way to work. Above the gate it was written "Arbeit macht frei", that means "Work brings freedom".

Something that stroke me right away was that it was so beautiful there. If you had taken away all the board wires, and did not know about all the horrible things that had happened there, it would have been just like a normal, nice street with brick stone houses, and tall trees that were waving in the sun. And everything we saw was of course in colours. On movies and pictures I had seen everything was in black and white…

Our guide took us into a museum where we could see some of the personal belongings to the prisoners. First she showed us a memorial, an urn with ashes from some of the millions of people that had been cremated, and a poster showed the concentration camps in Europe during Second World War.

In the next room there was a long display case filled up with shoes. A child's little red shoe, a wooden shoe, a couple of women sandals.

She also showed us a display case filled with hair that was cut off the prisoners in Auschwitz. The display case was many metres long, and still this was just a little bit of the hair that was left and not burnt when the Russian soldiers came to Auschwitz in 1945. The hair from the prisoners was also useful, it was used to make bags and mattresses.. When I looked at the 12 tons of hair, it was too much to really understand, but when a girl's plait caught my eyes I really understood how horrible it was.

We also got to see the prisoners' glasses, walking sticks and prosthesis that had been snatched away fro m the prisoners, before they had been sent directly to the gas chambers. When soldiers came to the Jewish ghettos and took the Jews with them, people thought that they should be taken to another and maybe better place, they didn't know about the horror that they were to meet, so they packed their suitcases with their personal belongings.

In one of the rooms there was an exhibition of some baby and children clothes. That made a huge impression, especially because I thought about my niece, a little girl at the age of two . And I thought about how horrible and inhumane it was to send such small and innocent children to the gas chambers.

After visiting the exhibitions indoors, we went outdoors and started walking towards the Wall of Death - an execution site of thousand of prisoners, mainly members of the camp resistance movement as well as prisoners from the Gestapo prison in Katowice. Me and Torstein had been given the task to read a poem by Arnulf Øverland called "Du må ikkje sove". To this point the guiding had not been as tough as I had expected, but to read that poem was really hard. The reading went fine, but my legs were shaking, and my voice could break any minute. After the reading, Torstein put down a beautiful bunch of flowers and we all had one minute of silence.

Our guide also told us about a way to punish prisoners. Down in a cellar was built a little room about 1sq.m. Down by the floor there was a tiny, tiny "door" so four to five people could crawl inside, and inside that dark room, with heavy air, no food nor water, no place to sit down or to move, they had to stand through a whole night. And after a night with no sleep at all, you had to go out and work just as the other prisoners. The minimum punishment in the dark room was five days, but the longest punishment a man got was 21 days. That's the same thing as 21 days without sleeping…

Later the guide showed us the gas chamber and the crematorium. Inside the gas chamber it was dark and the walls were of concrete. I was allowed to touch the marks that tpeople who had been gassed had made with their own bare hands.

The next concentration camp we visited was Birkenau.I had never understood how big the camp was before that day. It was gigantic!! The campsite was 1700 km2 . You could look left, and the only thing you could see were wooden barracks, and then you could look right and have the same view. We had the same guide in Birkenau as in Auschwitz, and she started the guiding by taking us to the prisoners' latrines. You can see on the picture how it looked like.

Aa a prisoner you were never allowed to sit on the toilet more than 30 seconds, and during that time you could get spanked and told to be quicker.
You were only allowed to use the toilet in the morning before you went to work, and one time after work, and the law was that you were not allowed to go out of bed during the night. So if one person that was lying on the upper level in the bed got diarrhoea, and couldn't hold himself during the night, it wouldn't take long before everybody in the barrack had diarrhoea.

The conditions in the barracks were horrible. The barracks had no foundations,they were built directly on the swampy ground.The barracks were designed as stables for 52 horses and they were intended to house up to 1000 prisoners. It was normal that up to 12 persons shared one bed, some even had to lie on the ground that could be full of mud, and where the rats mangled.

It was very hot the day we were there, but as a mark of respect for the victims,we were not allowed to show our shoulders or our knees. To stand the heat I grabbed every chance to stand in the shadow or get a breeze of wind.

While we were walking from one place to another, we often passed ditches that the prisoners had dug. I thought about how exhausting it must have been for them, working all day, while the sun was burning on their necks and shoulders, and they hadn't the chance to drink water when they were thirsty. The barracks were also up-heated by the sun,something which made sleeping at night difficult.

Hot in summertime, and can you imagine how cold it would be in winter-time? The landscape was open, and nothing could stop the freezing wind that came blowing up under the ceiling, where prisoners were lying with little clothes. And they had no real chance to warm up the barracks . There was an oven and the prisoners got a bucket full of coal for heating, but it was in vain. The heat disappeared as soon as it had come out into the open room, and the bucket became empty too fast.

Just to show the inhumane treatment; Our guide told us a story about a little girl at the age of eight, that had tried to take an apple, and had got caught. The punishment from the officers was to stand barefoot in the snow a whole day.

When the Germans realized that the game was over,in other words that they had lost the war, they tried to hide all evidence of the terrible things they had done to the prisoners. They tried to destroy the gas-chambers and the crematoria. They succeeded in destroying the buildings, but not the foundations.

Inside the gas-chambers the Germans had installed shower-heads that were supposed to calm down the prisoners that soon were to be gassed. They were told that they were going to have a shower, and later they would get some new clothes. Before they were gassed, their belongings were taken away from them. Then they got undressed, but they were told that it was nothing to worry about, they should just have a nice shower. The last thing they did before they sent the prisoners into the gaschamber, was to shave all their hair. When all that was done, they're were standing with nothing to tell who they were. They had lost all their belongings, they were naked, and they had no hair on their head. You can imagine that this treatment was really a psychological strain for many people.

An international memorial has been built in Birkenau. The International Monument to the victims of Auschwitz and Birkenau was cermonially unveiled in April 1967. Around the monument lots of bricks make an open square, the bricks are to symolize all the victims. Terje and Håkon read the same poem as me and Torstein, and they too put down a bunch of flowers.

After visiting Birkenau, we went back to Auschwitz. There we listened to a Norwegian woman that told about her life under the war. Sadly I sat far back in the room, I so I didn't hear much of what she was saying.

After her mini-talk we went out in the sun and parted up in groups. Each group talked about all the impressions each person had got during that day. We had our excellent guide, Morten, on our group. I learned a lot when I listened to him.
He made me realize that racism and persecution still excist in Europe today.

Day 4: Crakow
This was the big shopping day for me. We were to spend a whole day in Crakow.I looked forward to get started.

But before we began our shopping tour, we had a walk outside the beautiful Wawel Castle. We had a magnificent view from there.

On our way around the castle, we passed a statue of a dragon that blew fire now and then. The legend said that the dragon once had been alive. He had been eating many of the civilians in the city, but then a bright young man got the idea to drown the dragon in the river beside the castle. How he managed to do that, I don't remember, but he did manage it, and now the dragon stands there to remind everybody on the horrible time when he was alive.

In the middle of Crakow city we find the Market Square, on one side is the Cloth Hall and on the other side the beautiful St. Mary's Church. Every hour, a bugle call is played from the church tower.

The deal was that we were allowed to walk around in the city on our own for a couple of hours, We had to walk in groups on minimum three persons. Venke, Marthe, Monica and me were one group.

We decided that the first thing we were to explore was the Cloth Hall. Indoors there were many stalls that sold cheap jewelleries, chessboards, tablecloths etc. We systematically worked us through the hall. I bought a chessboard and some other souvenirs to my family that didn't have the chance to see all this.

After we were finished buying souvenirs, we went to search for the youth-clothes stores. And we did find them!! I spent a lot of my money in that city…

Then it was time for St. Mary's Church.It was breathtaking! The famous altar really amazed me, how gorgeous they had made it. The altar was decorated with small statues in gold, and above it was at least 50 small unbelievably detailed glass paintings. You could just sit on a bench and be amazed. The colours most used were black and gold and that made a great effect.

Later we and some of our new friends from Tangenåsen tried the funny "golf cars". They were small cars with trailers you could sit in. You paid the driver some money, and then he drove you around in the city for about 15 minutes, it depended on how much you paid him. We laughed heartily, while we tried to get the driver to drive at a very high speed.

I got to do a lot that day. Like feeding the pigeons, walk in the famous street where artists had displayed their paintings, and of course I did a lot of shopping.It will be a day I always will remember.

Day 5: Krakow- Zary
We visited the Salt Mines in Wieliczka this day. This salt mine is on UNESCO's World List of Cultural and Natural Heritage. To enter the mine, we had to go at least 57 metres down before we could start the guiding, and still there were many metres downwards. We were parted in groups on 30 persons, and our group got a funny and a bit weird man to be our guide.

They had made many beautiful statues of salt. Some of the chapels were dedicated to special persons. The guide said the miners were very religious.He also showed us an underground lake, that consisted of 97% salt. The thing that impressed me the most was a great hall, the Chapel of St. Kinga,with huge chandeliers made of the finest salt.
After the visit in the famous Salt Mines we drove to Zary were we should sleep over. Venke, Monica, Marthe and me shared a hotel room, and we were so lucky to get a new suit. They had filled up all the normal hotel rooms, so they had to use the suit without any extra cost for us. Of course we didn't mind that.

Day 6: Zary- Berlin
We had dinner at Hard Rock Café. That was really cool. There were signed guitars and pictures from many famous bands and persons, like Guns and Roses and Sex Pistols. In the "eating room" you could look at big screens where they sent well known rock music videos.One thing that made it fun was the waiters ,they were joking and made us all laugh.

It was also fun watching some really good breakers, they were performing at a place near the Europa Centre. And it was fun to speak German. My impression of Berlin so far is that it was an interesting town. I wished we could have stayed longer in Berlin!

At the Mauer museum, we got a lot of information about how life had been during the division of the town.To be honest, I thought it was a bit boring there, so I was happy when we were finished and drove to see Brandenburger Tor. It was dark outside, so they had lighted up the place, something that made sort of a magical atmosphere. They had also installed a big football in front of the gate. It was quite an unusual sight.

Day 7: Berlin- Swinoujscie
This was one of the last days we were to spend with our new friends from Tangenåsen. But we got good time to talk, because we drove a lot. Many of us had bought chess boards in Crakow, so we got the chance to challenge each others in playing chess. I must admit that it is not my favouritee game..

Sachsenhausen
Around the whole camp were watch towers, and there were barbed wires everywhere. One of the first thing we got to see when we entered the camp was the place where prisoners had to check that the shoes the German soldiers should use in war, could cope with the ruff treatment they would meet in the field. When a prisoner was given a pair of shoes, it didn't matter if the shoes were three numbers too small or too big. They had to walk around in them anyway, and it was unusual if you didn't get blisters. Because the prisoners were so slim, and didn't have half the weight the soldiers had. However,they had to carry 20 kilos heavy rucksacks, so they would have about the same weight as normal people.Tthere was also was a prison inside the concentration camp, and inside that prison there was a smaller prison. The people outside the prison didn't have a clue about the horrible things the persons in the prison were exposed to. Such horrible torture methods were used, that I won't write about it here.

After the visit in Sacsenhausen, we got some food to gather strength to a tour in the women camp Ravenbrück.

Ravensbrück was quite big, and it was surrounded by a beautiful lake. The female inspectors sometimes took women and children on a walk beside the lake to show them what they couldn't have.

Norwegian women and children were brought to this camp, too. They have made a museum there. Every country which had prisoners there have got an exhibition room there. In one room you could see photos and belongings to Norwegian women who had been imprisoned in the camp.

One way they used to punish women and their children if one of them had done something wrong, was to send the women inside a long corridor and make them run while they were shot at. They didn't shoot to kill them , but only to force them to run to stay alive. They got the mother to stand and watch her child being shot at the whole day. When the night came, they put the girl and her mother back in the cell, and next morning they took them out and shot them.

Day 8: Ystad- Nesoddtangen
When we woke up in Sweden this day, I felt like I had come home. I had had an incredible trip, but I felt that I began to be tired of new hotel rooms, and to carry my luggage everywhere, so I began to look forward to come home.

It was sad to say goodbye to everybody from Tangenåsen, but we agreed to keep in contact and we exchanged mobile numbers. Some are even talking about coming here to visit us in the summer holiday.

But the journey was not over for us yet. We had a long night on the night express ahead. Back in Ørsta my grandmother came to pick me up. I assure you I had a lot to tell…