Krakow

Our guided tour brought us through the old city.   Our first stop was the old Jewish area, once full of life and culture. The population of krakow was once 64,000 now only 500. three synagogues were still standing, once used by nazis as offices, and now revived. Hostels, klezmer bars and restaurants spotted the square. We passed the only remaining walls of the ghetto, shaped like tombstones or tablets. We drove on the other side of the river to visit the Schindler factory, where faces of those who were saved, are posted. Back to the huge castle/church on the hill in the center of the old city, beautifully preserved.
Stephen and I left the group to walk back to the Jewish quarter and Galicia museum. The exhibit was about the current Jewish synagogues, cemeteries and buildings sadly desecrated all over Poland.  Is it that people don't care or don't want to remember?
Our next visit was to auschwitz and birkenau.  I have seen so many pictures and learned much about the holocaust, but to walk the grounds, feel the air and see the buildings, it was so hard to imagine all that happened in that place on earth. We were silent, moved by the holy ground of where our families were murdered.

Stephen wrote:

My Auschwitz Birkenau

I stand  with my back to the killing wall and look up at the sky as if it is my last. My own breathing is difficult.

My fingers touch the scratched walls of the gassing room and again i look up at the sky through the ceiling vent and hear the clatter of zyklon b pellets.

This is the murderous hate that becomes my adrenaline as my own sun rises again this morning after.

Why is mankind so naturally destructive. Is there no learning from  yesterdays.

The sky is blue once more. Perhaps a natural deception that life is as it should be.