On Thursday, we spent a very somber morning visiting the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. We went to Auschwitz first, which is about a two hour drive from Krakow. At Auschwitz, we first entered the main gate, over which are the German words "Arbeit macht frei", which means "Work will set you free." After entering the compound, we walked around and saw the barracks, the mass execution sites including a long bar used for hanging ("the collective gallows"), the "Death wall" where prisoners were lined up and shot, artifacts such as shoes, eyeglasses, hairbrushes, luggage, Jewish prayer shawls, and an entire room full of hair that was collected after the prisoners' heads were shaved. Also on display were the ruins of the gas chamber, crematorium, and some human ashes. In one of the barracks, we saw the room where St. Maximilian Kolbe died. Maximilian Kolbe was a Catholic priest who had been sent to Auschwitz. After a prisoner ha...
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