Our Memorial Visit to Poland 2022
Get an impression of the trip by watching a compilation of our photos and videos! © Mara
Article
by Belinda and Holly
On Wednesday our trip started with a nine-hour bus ride, where all the sandwiches our parents prepared with love, were replaced by absolutely healthy McDonalds food. At 6pm we arrived at our hostel, where we settled in pretty fast. Dinner and breakfast were served at Hamsa, a restaurant nearby.
On Thursday we woke up to good, sunny weather and after breakfast the classes were separated. Each group had their own guided tour through Kazimierz, the historic Jewish quarter of Kraków. We were told about the history of Jews in Kraków and took a look at different buildings and places there. The main sights were the Remuh synagogue and cemetery. We could also recognize some places from the movie Schindler's List, which we watched as a preparation beforehand. The guided tour ended at the cloth hall and we were given free time. Our group decided to go to a nice burger restaurant to eat some lunch and two of us bought stuffed animals in the cloth hall. Then we were told to meet again at the marketplace and listened to extremely interesting presentations by our classmates. After that we were allowed to explore the city on our own.
On Friday our tour guide showed us around the former Kraków Ghetto. There we were able to see the Ghetto’s wall and the memorial. After that we went to Schindler’s factory. We had cake and hot chocolate in the museum café before our tour started. We were able to learn a lot about this topic during the guided museum tour. And even more afterwards, when we listened to a couple more presentations. Then the teachers gave us freetime again and our group decided to do a city rallye, which taught us a lot about the legends and fun facts of the city and was really fun. We only got back right before dinner, with our feet hurting from the 20 thousand steps we walked that day.
On Saturday we were heading to the main event of our trip - concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz. After a tense 1h ride we listened to some presentations. Subsequently we took a 3h guided tour in Auschwitz Stammlager where we were told many frightening stories and saw many terrifying objects and buildings. We got a little break while we drove to Auschwitz-Birkenau. There we saw barracks and were told even more facts and stories.
It had been a rainy and cold day and when we got back to the bus, all of us were just as physically exhausted as we were mentally. Back at the hostel we packed our things and for the last time went to our local supermarket to buy snacks for our ride back home.
The next morning, we went on the bus. At our first stop the teachers surprised us with Pączki which are the Polish “Pfannkuchen”. After a long ride we arrived at the Netto parking lot next to our school building. At the end of our article we once again want to thank our teachers for making this trip possible. The impressions we got on these 5 days will stay with us for our whole life.
Thursday, 20 October 2022 - Retracing Oskar Schindler and Jewish History in Kraków
Blog Entry - 20/10/2022
by Emilia and Lena
Full of excitement, we started our first morning in Kraków. After breakfast, which was at 8 am, we had a guided tour around the city starting at the restaurant Hamsa. The classes were split into two groups, each led by an expert, who told us all about Krakow and the history of the Jews. Around 9 am the trip started with a visit to the Jewish cemetery “Remuh”, which was founded in 1551. To honor the dead people and as a symbol of eternity, stones were placed on their gravestones by their relatives. Something that really shocked us was that the Nazis used the graveplates as pavement. Nowadays those that are well-preserved are built into the cemetery wall.
At 9:45 am everyone entered the orthodox “Remuh synagogue”. As we learned, there are 100 orthodox Jews, 400 members of the liberal Jewish community and 600 progressive Jews. This is explained by the fact that only the progressive Jewish community guarantees gender equality.
The oldest synagogue was located at the Kraków city wall, where a part of the movie “Schindler's list” was filmed. Afterwards our guide taught us more about the old town. We went to an inner courtyard, which was also shown in the movie. That is where we took a class photo.
At 11:15 am we arrived at the “Wawel castle”, one of the largest castles in Poland. We had incredible views all over Kraków and took a first look at the house of Oskar Schindler. It is located in a street formerly inhabited by Nazis.
The last stop of the tour was the “The Cloth Hall” from where we were set off in smaller groups and were given an opportunity to move around the city. Our group, for example, went to a pizza restaurant, to the river “Vistula” and took a walk with an amazing view.
At 3 pm every group was supposed to meet at the “Eros Bendato sculpture”. There, several people held very interesting presentations. Until 6:45 pm we were allowed to explore Kraków in groups. We decided to spend time at “The Leaky Cauldron”, a café for Harry Potter fans. When our free time was over, everyone had to meet at the hostel again, to have dinner. Afterwards everybody had time to do whatever they wanted for the last time of that day, until 10 pm. Everyone went to their rooms and the long, but very exciting day was over.
Friday, 21 October 2022 - Visiting Kraków Ghetto and Schindler's Enamel Factory
Blog Entry - 21/10/2022
by Nelly and Jamie
We started our day with a breakfast at the restaurant Hamsa, which is near different synagogues. Afterwards we met our tour guide to visit the former Krakow ghetto for 2 hours. On our way there we came to the old market place. It was next to the previous town hall, which is now a museum. We saw different types of statues, that showed the type of toys the people had back then. The next sight we saw was a bridge, we crossed that had artists hanging from wires. One building we saw before entering the ghetto was a Catholic Church in Podgórze.
A few meters away there was the old town hall for the people who lived in the Kraków Ghetto. They had to go there to get stamps inside their passport. Otherwise they would have been executed. At the end about 20.000 Jews were killed because they weren’t able to receive stamps inside their passports.
As we entered to ghetto which was a collective camp for Polish Jews we saw different houses. Some of them were old buildings from the ghetto and some were new buildings, that were built because of the space problem in Kraków. Our guide showed us a former hospital and social help organisation and day care centre for children aged 6 to 14. One doctor fled with his wife and took some children with him to escape via the sewers because the next day the executions were supposed to start. This is how some children managed to escape while many other children from the social help organisation and day care were shot by the Germans.
On our way to Schindler‘s factory we stopped at the old market square where empty chairs remind of the former inhabitants of the ghetto who were forced to leave behind their belongings. Smaller chairs stand for the children and the bigger ones for the adults. Those chairs faced different direction, some pointing to Schindler‘s factory, the old pharmacy and others to the old concentration camp.
At noon we arrived at Oskar Schindler‘s factory, we said goodbye to our tour guide and had a 45 minute break, during which we were able to get some lunch at different restaurants or food trucks nearby. At 1 pm we met our new guide for the museum, who told us about the life before war and the conditions during the war. We were able to see original uniforms and weapons from the SS. The museum also included areas that were designed like the places we talked about for example a railway station or basements that showed how the people had to live during war.
After we all gathered we listened to some presentations by our classmates about the history of the places we visited and had some free time. For dinner we met in front of the hostel to eat at Hamsa’s. At least the teachers enjoyed the Polish Pickle Soup!
Saturday, 22 October 2022 - Encountering the Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau - Former German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp
Blog Entry - 22/10/2022
by Lucas and Juri
Waking up with a few hours of sleep is not perfect, but today we were able to make up for the lost hours of sleep on the bus while traveling to Auschwitz, the largest concentration and extermination camp in Europe during World War II.
Since we had to be there by 10am, we ate breakfast on the bus. After arriving and getting our first impressions of the camp, we listened to some presentations and went through the security check at the entrance. Then we got our headphones to better understand the guide and explored the main area of the Auschwitz camp. There we were shown many frightening, cruel and humiliating actions, objects and stories.
After a short break, we went to Auschwitz-Birkenau. This is the camp where most people were murdered during World War II. We were shown many barracks, a crematorium and the horrible conditions in which people had to live. The day was very exhausting, both physically, because we had to walk and stand all the time, and psychologically because of all the impressions.