Poland was not what I expected. Sitting from my hotel room, my view was of a large mall the size of the one in my hometown with several signs for American fast food places. I am willing to bet that there are more KFCs in Poland than there are in Ohio. The culture here is very similar to that of the United States and many of the people I met spoke English very well. While Poland and The United States share very similar cultures, it became clear to me very on that our countries vastly different histories have a profound effect on the way we view the world.
Schindler’s Museum was on of the first stops in Krakow. After a short ride on the tram system, we arrived at the actual factory where Schindler saved 1,200 Jews. He employed these Jews and kept them from being deported. Schindler was a member of the Abwehr and had advanced warning to raids that would take place on his factory. He used this knowledge to help save Jews that were about to be deported. Compared to Jews in the ghettos, the Jews working in Schindler’s factory were treated better and received more food. I was surprised how little the museum actually focused on Schindler’s actions. It seemed that the majority of the museum focused on Poland before, during, and after occupation. The museum was particularly effective in immersing the viewer in what it would have been like to live under Nazi rule. The tight, claustrophobic hallways filled with Nazi propaganda surrounded me as I walked. Hitler saw Poles as subhuman and wanted to Germanize the area to make a suitable home for Germans. The common theme of this trip so far in museums has been trying to determine the bias that is within it. In the museum’s depiction of Nazi occupied Poland, any mention of Polish collaboration was absent. As our group discussed in a group discussion at our hotel, each country attempts to put their history in the best possible light. Poles do not want to be remembered for their collaboration with the Nazis.
Learning about the Nazi occupation of Poland and the dehumanization of Poles was a fitting transition to our trip to Auschwitz. There are no words I can use to describe what it felt like to walk through the camp. We started in Auschwitz I, where we walked through rooms filled with human hair harvested from the innocent people murdered. We walked through a room filled with shoes from men, woman, and children. Seeing children’s shoes was especially heartbreaking. We walked the streets that the prisoners of the camp had to stand at attention for hours during role call. Role call could last for hours during the harsh winters of Poland. Auschwitz-Birkenau was even harder to comprehend. The entrance is ominous and has been called “The Gate of Death.”
Gate of Death.
We walked along the same path where selection took place. Selection was where the Jews were separated into those fit for work, and those not fit. Those who were not fit were led down the same road where I stood to their deaths. In Jon Schulman’s site report, he impressed upon us the idea that luck was the determining factor to who lived and who died. Sometimes all that mattered was what side of the train car they got off on. Continuing down the road, I walked up to the rubble of the two largest gas chambers at Auschwitz. The Nazis would tell the people deemed “unfit” for work that they would be taking a shower. They were ordered to strip down and enter the shower. The German soldiers would then lock the door and fill the room with poison gas. When the Nazis knew that the Soviets would soon liberate the camp, they attempted to destroy the evidence of their atrocities. All that remains is a pile of rubble, evidence of atrocities committed against Jews during Nazi rule.
Road where selection took place. Jews would arrive on the rail line, then be sorted.
The American memory of World War II is distinct from that of the Polish. American’s are able to put the War into a neat block of time, 1941-1945. After this, America moved on to the Cold War. This neat organization of History cannot be done in Polish History. As Schindler’s Museum pointed out, after the horrors of Nazi occupation the Polish people were subject to Soviet rule. Polish history in the mid 1900s can not be separated into distinct events, rather, they suffered through the same situations for decades. While Poland and America share much of the same culture, evident by the countless McDonalds and KFC’s, we do not have the same memory of the 1900s.