Majdanek - Unknown Horrors

Lublin is a large historic city.  It sits on the Royal Route from the ancient capital of Poland in Krakow to Vilnius the capital of a now independent Lithuania, but between 1569 and 1793 the joint capitals of union between the two nations.

Today it’s the ninth largest city in Poland and second only to Krakow in size in the southern part of the country.

I say this because it should be a more well-known city than it is, but also because despite it’s size located in its south western suburbs is a truly disturbing location – a key part of the Nazi Holocaust machinery – a designated extermination camp, that saw the deaths of at least 80,000 people (nearly 60,000 of them Jewish). 

Whilst this isn’t on the almost incomprehensible scale of Auschwitz it is notable for it happening so close to a major city.

Auschwitz is located more than 60Km from Krakow, Majdanek is just 4Km from the centre of Lublin.

Until I was planning on what to do on my trip to Lublin I’d never even heard of Majdanek.  When it came up on the Lublin tourism website as a place that visitors should go to I assumed that it would be a long way out of town, possibly only accessible on a guided tour.  I was very surprised to see that it was accessible by over half a dozen bus routes on the main road out of the city to the southern suburbs.

The site makes it very clear that a visit should be respectful, but that also people should be aware of the nature of the site – strongly warning against anyone under the age of 14 visiting.

When I visited Auschwitz, I was struck – as many people comment – by a sense of unease, partly the lack of any birdsong, or anything else living nearby, but also the knowledge that so much horror happened there.

The same wasn’t the case for Majdanek to begin with, despite one of the first things you are greeted with on entering the main part of the camp is the combined shower block and gas chamber – empty canisters of Zyklon B on display behind glass screens.

Because of it’s location there is a fair amount of wildlife on the site, and as the city has expanded the site is now overlooked by homes and a part of the university.

Where the true horror of the site really strikes is towards the end of the visit at the Mausoleum.  Here under a giant dome sits a large mound, made almost entirely of the cremated remains of the Nazi’s victims found on the site at its liberation in 1944.  The fact that this is only likely to be a small number of the total victims of the site is all the more harrowing. 

Along the frieze of the dome runs the text “Our fate is a warning to you”.

It isn’t a pleasant place to be, and it’s not supposed to be.  It’s supposed to be a reminder of the horrors that humans can inflict on each other when they think they can get away with it, and in the case of Majdanek, unlike many of the other extermination camps in the various Nazi occupied territories, within sight of a major city.


Footnote
When I visited Auschwitz, it was a damp overcast day.  Whilst this made the sites appear even greyer and devoid of colour, it did make looking round the sites an easy task.

I visited Majdanek on a hot sunny day, with temperatures nudging 30C.  I had bottles of cold water, I was covered in sun block, had comfy shoes on and was only leisurely walking around the site, and yet I found that quite unpleasant.  It brings home even more the horrific conditions that people were held in (and I can only assume the winter months would have been even worse). 

It was difficult to visit many of the exhibits in the former barrack blocks as the temperatures and humidity inside were stiffing and yet there were just a handful of people in each block at any time – trying to imagine being in there with hundreds, possibly up to 1,000 other people is almost impossible.

Curtain Call

“From Stettin in the Baltic, to Trieste in the Adriatic an "Iron Curtain" has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia…”

Winston Churchill: 5th March 1946

Having come across the quote on numerous occasions I’d never really paid it much attention, but a few years ago I saw a programme on Deutsche Welle about someone taking a bike trip along the former East German border, in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I didn't pay it much attention at the time, but it started to come back into my mind as I looked to plan a “big trip” for 2012 – Why not travel from Stettin (which only after a bit of hunting around did I find out was now Szczecin in Poland) to Trieste?

It was very obvious early on that to try and squeeze that into a fortnight would be an almost impossible task if I actually wanted to spend time in any of the places I was planning to go through.

So I split the trip up into three, uneven, but doable bits without even considering the finishing date.

In 2012 I started in Szczecin (Stettin) on the Baltic and travelled round the edge of what had once been the DDR

In 2013 I travelled through some of the areas most impacted by the Iron Curtain – Dresden left with a hole in its city centre as a reminder of what “The West” had done, Prague and Budapest – scenes of the brutal repression the Warsaw pact handed out to people who didn't toe the line and through the former Czechoslovakia a country that following the fall of communism decided to go one stage further and without any bloodshed or fighting simply dissolve its marriage and let its two nations go their own way.

As I started to plan for 2014, the final leg through the former Yugoslavia and down to the Adriatic at Trieste, it suddenly started to dawn on me quite how important a year this is.

It was, after all, in Sarajevo in 1914 that a single shot sparked the bloodbath of the First World War as Europe ripped itself to shreds.

And, it was just 15 years ago that American and British planes were “strategically bombing” Serbia in an attempt to bring an end to the ethnic wars that had torn Yugoslavia apart.

But, perhaps most relevantly to my journey down the Iron Curtain were the actions that took place on May 2nd 1989.  25 years ago without consulting anyone the Hungarian government decided to open its borders with Austria; it dismantled 150 miles of barbed wire and with it opened the flood gates.

Whilst democracy movements had already started to take hold in both Poland and Hungary by then, this was the first hole being punched in the Iron Curtain, a fatal hole that just 6 months late on November 9th saw Berliners dancing on the top of the Berlin Wall.

25 years on and there are a host of new or newly-independent countries.  Some like the Czech Republic and Slovakia achieving this amicably and smoothly, some like the Baltic States and Slovenia after some fighting and sadly in the rest of the Balkans through years of horrific war.

But, what’s clear, 25 years on from the curtains collapse, and 15 years on from the end of the wars in the Balkans, Europe has stitched itself back together.

From Szczecin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic it’s been an interesting, and at times eye-opening journey through a part of the world that once looked like it had disappeared for ever.

Loving the lingua franca

I’m sitting in the bar of the hotel listing to an interesting conversation between a restaurant customer, the lady on reception and the hotel manager.
The conversation is a discussion over whether the hotel should be charging for parking for someone who is just dining in the restaurant rather than staying.

What’s most amazing is that all three are having the conversation in a language other than their mother tongue.

The customer is French (he has stated this fact on at least four occasions “at home in France we do not charge to visit the restaurant”), the lady on reception is Polish, the manager, judging from the accent (and the name on the duty manager board) is German.

Yet they are all having this conversation in English, which means I can listen in and enjoy a rather pompous customer being brought down a peg or two.

His general complaint is that in France you are never charged car parking to visit a hotel restaurant, and has finally escalated to the statement that if the hotel was run by a proper hotel chain this wouldn’t happen.

I’m trying not to laugh, as I’ll give the game away, as I can clearly see both the receptionist and manager are about to leap on this open goal.

It’s at this point I suddenly realise that perhaps English has become a little too pervasive.  The fact that it was automatically the language of choice for the customer when travelling abroad, and the fact that the hotel staff are fluent leaves me feeling a little thick.  After all, I can barely master please and thank you in Polish, let alone attempt to defuse an annoyed patron in another language.

And the punch line.

The hotel is part of the Accor chain.  France’s largest hotel chain

Globalisation in action

With the flexing nature of the borders in this part of the world Wrocław has lead an interesting life (being Breslau for a significant part of it right up to the end of the war)

Today it’s a confidently Polish city, but everywhere I looked I caught glimpses of other cities.

Heading in on the tram we went past a block of buildings with a Nordsee fish bar and Rossmann chemists, both big German chains, and then a little further on a Marks and Spencers next door to a BP garage with a large sign pointing to the Tesco Express on the edge of town.

Oh, and there was a Carrefour.

Save it, or let it slip away?

Two very different locations.
United by the most momentous events of the 20th Century.
Both incredibly important in the history of World War II, both decaying.

For a couple of years there has been a debate raging about what to do with some of the most important locations in World War II history.

In Poland it’s costing more and more each year to keep Auschwitz from decaying away, and a debate is raging that as to whether it should be allowed to rot away, or kept for future generations. The debate even made it into the British press in 2009
Cash crisis threat to Auschwitz

But it’s not just sites in the former occupied territories that are at danger of disappearing.

Here in the UK one of the most important locations, not only in the history of World War II, but also in the history of communication and computing, is slowly decaying.

Bletchley Park, nowadays on the edge of the Milton Keynes sprawl, was the home to the code breakers who helped the allies win the war.

It was from the unassuming small huts, many long since gone, and some of those that do remain in very poor repair, that people like Alan Turing cracked the Enigma code and enabled allied forces to read Hitler’s most private correspondence at the same time he was.

Today the site is a series of museums to the history of code breaking and computing. Much has been done to preserve parts of the site, and from where it was a couple of years ago when the “Saving Bletchley Park” campaign (Campaign Website) was set up large parts of the site are now back from the brink, but there are still parts of the site in danger of decaying to nothing.

Walking round Bletchley Park leaves you with an inspirational feeling for the work of the people who helped win the war from here.

Walking round Auschwitz is an incredibly moving and sobering experience. I’m not spiritual, but even I could feel something very odd in the atmosphere. I’m convinced that even if you didn’t know anything about the site or the Holocaust you couldn’t walk around the site without feeling that something very bad happened there.

And it’s perhaps for those very reasons that we need to keep these sites for future generations. It doesn’t matter how much you read about the places, no matter how many TV programmes you watch, nothing comes close to the feelings you get when you visit these places. Bletchley for all the right reasons, Auschwitz for all the wrong.

If at first you don’t succeed, change the rules

Shock!, Horror!, my train from Poznan was on time. Despite having travelled all the way from Warsaw it actually pulled into the station a couple of minutes early.

Or at least it did according to the indicator boards on the platform. For this was not the delayed 10:20 service, no, no, this was the on-time 10:42 service.

Which promptly lost time and was a quarter of an hour late into Berlin.

So my final encounter with PKP was as delayed as my first. 10 out of 10 for effort, I won’t comment on achievement.

Poznan closed for redecoration

What I had planned to be a packed day of museums and sights turned out to be a bit of a damp squib.

The museum to the Poznan uprising, which started after World War I to ensure that Poznan was part of the re-created Poland rather than Eastern Germany, was closed for reorganisation

The Museum of Musical Instruments was closed for redecoration

And the Archaeology museum was just closed for no apparent reason.

Does Poznan want tourists? Well, No, they do rather well from being the main trade fair site in Poland so they can probably afford to have all their museums shut if they wanted to!

Getting there

Well, PKP (Polish Railways) managed their best effort yet. The train for Warsaw to Poznan left on time (but then it did start at Warsaw so that wasn’t going to be so difficult!).

It did arrive into Poznan late, 20 minutes after its original due time. I wonder how much of that was down to the fact the train is a cooperation between PKP and Germany’s Deutscher Bahn.

Warsaw Knee

I’ve noticed that a very large number of Warsaws citizens appear to be wearing some form of strapping on their knees.

I wonder, is this some form of new fashion, or are the cobbles of Warsaw as lethal as I thought they looked.

An Ode to AirCon

I’ve just wandered down to breakfast, and on the way walked passed an open door. I thought for a moment that a heater must be on the blink as the wall of heat that engulfed me for a second or so was un-imaginable.

Just in case I decided on a closer look and discovered that the source of the heat was approximately 8 light minutes away being the large glowing object currently rising high into the sky.

On walking back into the hotel I was hit by the cooling sensation of air-con set to “freeze” mode.

I dread to think what it has done to my carbon footprint (ignoring on the one had the obscene number of flights I make and on the other the fact I have never owned a car), but with the temperatures, and more importantly the humidity at these levels at 9am I am glad for AirCon.

Introducing the CathDaq

CathDaq is something that myself and a couple of friends have been playing since we first went to Krakow in 2005.

The rules are very simple, you need to keep a tally of the number of members of religious orders that you see first. It is customary to call out “Nun”, “Monk” or “Priest” when you spot one.

Like the stock market some orders are worth more than others due to their rarity, or on some occasions, appearance in the news, or if they are in an odd location (though you should also be able to justify your presence!)

Trainee or novice monks and nuns are worth extra as are abbots, mother-superiors, bishops, arch-bishops, cardinals and pope(s).

But, the key rule is, The Vatican and other obviously religious places such as churches, monastery’s and cathedrals are out of bounds (that’s insider trading)

Clearly signposted events where large numbers are in attendance are also out (i.e. going to an event where the Pope will be present gets you nothing. You can only score a “Pope” if you casually bump into him on a street or if you get a personal audience outside of the Vatican.)

Variations of this are also available for other denominations and faiths. If you are particularly up on your religions you may want to take part in ID-100 (Inter-Denominational index of the top 100 Christian denominations) or the IRex the Inter-Religious index.

Architectural notes 2

Ibis architects strike again, when overlooking a major tram junction and converting an old Soviet office block, you could sound proof the rooms, or you could just leave them as they were so that every tram can be heard, even down to the bell sounding to announce the doors are closing.

European Harmony, We all agree the Germans are obsessional

Whilst waiting at Gdansk station I was able to earwig a conversation that was going on between two friends.

Based on the accents, she appeared to be Polish, and he was probably French. Together they were chatting away in their shared mutual language of English (it’s a hard life being a fluent speaker of the worlds Lingua Franca).

They were discussing the inevitable delay on his train out of Gdansk (his was even more delayed than mine). She was saying the effectively anything less than 15 minutes late was on time, and that they only normally announced delays to trains once it had passed this time, but you should only worry if your train hasn’t arrived within an hour of its scheduled time.

He mused on the decline of the French railways and how their trains were always running late, and then he mentioned the Germans.

They both agreed that the Germans were obsessional with time keeping, to the point of madness, and that Germans would go nuts if their train is more than a minute late.

Having been on a German train that was running late I am happy to say that the Germans don’t go mad, they like their English counterparts, just grumble about how bad the service is, and it never used to be like this.

But it was interesting to see that even in this time of European Union and Harmony the old divisions are still there. The Poles, French and Brits united in a conviction that the Germans are obsessed with time keeping. Now where did I leave my umbrella and cricket bat, it must be time for a cup of tea!

Aspirational, but wrong

Well, I finally arrived in Warsaw, a little bit late. Once again the Polish railways strike, and they had been doing so well. The train was to all intents and purposes on time when it arrived in Gdansk, pulling into the station just 10 minutes after it’s advertised departure time

Sadly, something (I think in Britain it would be referred to as “a-delay-on-a-preceding-train-in-the-Warsaw-area”) held the train up and we eventually pulled into Warsaw Centralny station just over 55 minutes late. I was the lucky one. I was the last to join my compartment at Gdansk, and the first to leave. As the train had started at 6am in the very North West of the country, and was continuing onto Krakow, I didn’t bear to think how late it would be by the time the final passengers got off.

To add to my fun, and in a repeat of Gdansk, albeit this time I didn’t get caught out, as I walked out of the station there was a massive clap of thunder and the heavens opened.

You wanted a tour; we’ll give you a tour

I’ve been to my third site in Poland where you have to go on either a compulsory, or advisory, tour.

The first was at the Salt Mines in Wieliczka, you had to go on the tour so you didn’t get lost, the second was at Auschwitz - Birkenau in Oświęcim, where it was recommended to go on a tour to fully understand the site (and in some ways offer an element of support for what is an emotionally draining location) and the third was today at Malbork castle, where you have to go on a tour if you want to get in!

Whilst the three tours all had very different reasons for existing, they all had one thing in common, the length.

These were epic tours lasting around the three hour mark. Everywhere else I have been guided tours last just over an hour, or at most 90 minutes (see for example the guided tour of the Vatican Museum, though if you include the two hour wait to get in…)

So the question has to be… If the Poles can do it, why can’t the rest of Europe?!

Be aspirational, even if you are wrong

It’s always good to be aspirational, aspire to what you want to achieve, not what you are currently able to achieve.

Perhaps not so good to be aspirational if you are the bloke in charge of timetabling for Polish Railways.

It could be that I’ve been using them at a bad time, or it could just be simple old misfortune, but every train that I have caught, waited for, or just seen advertised on an adjacent platform has been late mostly by over 5 minutes, sometimes more.

Yesterday my train from Hel did leave on time, but arrived in Gdynia 15 minutes late, for no apparent reason, it didn’t stop anywhere it shouldn’t have; it didn’t appear to go particularly slowly anywhere.

Today, my train to Malbork was over half an hour late, or it could have been 20 minutes late as the indicators on the platform showed a completely different time to the timetable!

I’m hoping it’s just a spot of bad luck, and that my journeys from Gdansk to Warsaw, Warsaw to Poznan and Poznan onto Berlin are all on time, but somewhere at the back of my mind I doubt it, the people waiting at Gdansk this morning had a very familiar expression… “The 8:15’s late, again, fourth time this week, what a way to run a railway, they do it better on the continent you know…”

Go to Hel(l)! It’s actually quite nice

After being told it on many occasions, I have taken up people’s advice and gone to Hel.

This Hel has long sandy beaches, an aquarium and is easily reachable from Gdansk.

Located on a long spur of land that juts out into the Baltic the Hel Peninsular can keep the English speaking tourists in jokes for hours (helped by the Polish sense of humour by numbering the bus that serves Hel town itself 666)

I did Hel the scenic way, out on the Ferry Tram from Gdansk to Hel and then back along the peninsular and along the coast by train.

This now means I have been to both Hell (Norway) and Hel (Poland) in the year and have discovered them to be frozen over and very pleasant.

So the next time someone tells me to go to Hell I will tell them – Thank you for the recommendation, but I’ve already been, it was very pleasant

The glorious smell of burning flesh

After yesterdays inclement weather I went out prepared for the worst. My jacket in my bag, jeans rather than shorts and a plastic bag inside my backpack to preserve my still waterlogged but just about useable guidebook.

Within about an hour it was obvious that I had over prepared. Not a cloud in the sky, and more importantly little in the way of shade (outside of being forced to sit in a street-side café with a large glass of beer and your feet up!)

By the time I eventually stopped for lunch it was obvious that the main thing cooking was me. I had a quick hunt through my bag and then remembered the conversation I had had with myself in the morning that was pretty much, “won’t bother with the sun tan cream, won’t need it”. To quote the great philosopher Homer “D’oh!”

I spent most of the afternoon indoors, so it prevented me from getting any worse, and as my skin didn’t actually feel too hot I think I might just have gotten away with it…

The sacred art of guidebook drying

To say that the weather has been changeable this afternoon would be a bit of an understatement.

After a pleasant wander around the town and a short stop for a late lunch, I caught the ferry up the river to Westerplatte. This small spit of land poking out into the Baltic had a traumatic life during World War II. It was here that at dawn on September 1st 1939 the German ship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire. These shots marked the start of the invasion of Poland and by the end of the day the continent would be mobilising and two days later War would officially be declared.

The area has not been rebuilt and a few bombed out buildings, slowly being reclaimed by nature, and a statue is all that remain. It is well worth a visit, but possibly not during the middle of a massive thunderstorm.

In an attempt to keep sort of dry I sheltered under a tree until a really big flash of lightning nearby reminded me that sheltering under tress in a storm is a silly idea, so I managed to run to a nearby bar and shelter under an awning.

However, the rain was so hard, and kept getting harder, that it managed to penetrate my bag and turned my nearly new guidebook into a soggy mess. As I type this I have the heater in the bathroom up to full blast with the book lying open in front of it in an attempt to make it usable, any attempt to turn pages at present results in the paper starting to disintegrate. That’s how wet it was! Of course, 20 minutes later the sun was out and it was all very pleasant again (if you ignore the massive puddles that had formed in all the streets)

All aboard screaming air

There were just a few babies on the flight (at one point I counted five separate sets of screaming coming from different parts of the plane!), and with a bumpy take off and landing they were more screamy than normal.

Still, despite that, the flight was comfortable, and more importatnly on-time. My luggage managed to keep it's almost unbroken record of being about the last off the plane, but it meant that I only had to wait a couple of minutes for the bus into town.

Room wasn't instantly ready, but after a quick cup of tea and a read through the key bits of the guidebook to Gdansk it was. Very nice room, balcony overlooking some parkland. It's all gone rather too smoothly, but I am happy for it to stay that way. Now I've just got to find a cash point which will take my bank card...