Oswiecim

Travel tip #7 – Beware of anyone from Oswiecim

There’s no way to sugarcoat this, not even I could make light of the horror that is Auschwitz. 

It was horrifying, it was dreadful.

The end. 

But this posed a problem as I still had 1500 words to write, with hopefully a glimpse of levity, and I had nothing. 

In fact, I had less than nothing. Back in Krakow I was wracking my brains over a cortado, which is really just hipster talk for a double espresso. When I realised actually how bad the situation was. 

Firstly, I wasn’t going to be able to fall back on my usual bumbling around while looking like an idiot routine. Because once I passed through the infamous “Arbeit macht frei” gate, that was simply unacceptable. 

And secondly, a cortado only takes about a minute and a half to drink. So then I was back out on the icy streets, wondering why I hadn’t ordered a nice cosy hot chocolate. 

In between trying to keep up my calories in the arctic-like conditions, I thought a lot about the horrors that I had witnessed. What haunted me the most was learning that most of the people who arrived at Auschwitz never made it three hours before their fate was sealed by the gas chambers. 

They never stood a chance. 

And the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex had five such facilities, each capable of disposing of 1000 bodies a day.

The whole atrocity beggared belief. 

My mind went round in circles for days. Until one afternoon, along the ice-covered Vistula, a thought occurred to me. 

Perhaps I was looking at it all wrong. 

I was never going to be able to write about what happened inside Auschwitz. So I started to think about what else happened that day. And didn’t that yield some interesting results? 

At first it was nothing spectacular. An inspector asked to see my tram ticket. Something that had never happened to me before. I bought an obwarzanek for the first time, despite having been to Poland many times. Before you Google that, it’s basically just a salted bagel.

But then, on the way to Auschwitz, we passed through the town of Oswiecim. And boy did my interest perk up? 

Don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of the place. Neither had I, and I was on a bus heading straight for it.  

The reason for the contradiction in the aforementioned two paragraphs was that the death factory complex of Auschwitz and Birkenau wasn’t tucked away out in the country, far away from prying eyes. 

But actually slap bang in, what turned out to be a very conveniently located Polish town called Oswiecim. It was so convenient in fact that the SS decided to build not one, but two death camps in the town itself. 

And that got me thinking, who would live in such a place?

I thought a lot about this on the drive over. And since I had caught the earlier bus and had some time to kill. I asked the bus driver to drop me at the train station instead of outside the gates of Auschwitz. 

There were two reasons for this.

I wanted to get a good look at Oswiecim, rather than just visiting the camps in isolation. 

But more pressingly, I was in dire need of a poo. Obviously, they had toilets in the visitors’ centre. But could you imagine the sheer inappropriateness of arriving at Auschwitz and when asked by the tour guide:

“Any questions?”

Replying:

“Um, yes. Where’s the toilet?”

No, that wasn’t going to work for me. The train station, by comparison, had a heated waiting room and sparklingly clean restrooms.

I sat down to do my business and thought of all the places I’d performed this ritual.

‘Never thought I’d be doing this outside of Auschwitz.’

I thought about those poor souls who had passed this very station in 1941. Damn sure none of them were treated to this level of luxury. 

It was freezing outside. The sort of weather that caused toe-amputating frostbite and a rather sour mood. But this was exactly what I had wanted. To see Auschwitz at its very worst. 

Not to have its legacy watered down by a lovely summer’s day, with its leafy birch and poplar trees making it seem like an agreeable neighbourhood ripe for urban gentrification. 

Out of the loo, I stared at the waiting commuters looking comfortable and warm in their toasty glass enclosure.

I shook my head and walked out. It was a 2km walk to Auschwitz, and it was now time to catch a glimpse of what sort of person lived in Oswiecim. A town that I had by now dubbed the spiritual home of the SS. 

I had no idea what to expect. I was still mulling over the inappropriateness of the brand-new KFC drive-through I noticed on the drive in. And the fact that we were in spitting distance of Poland’s largest amusement park.

Was Oswiecim going to be an abandoned, derelict village full of hobos or would there be gangs of skinheads and discreetly graffitied SWAT stickers? 

When I was writing this story, my mom told me that she actually knew a woman who grew up in Oswiecim. Mom went on to tell me that at her first opportunity, she did whatever she had to do to get out of there. 

And I am not just talking about getting out of Oswiecim, or even Poland itself. She left Europe altogether and moved to South Africa. 

Things must have been pretty bad, and the view from across the station definitely suggested that. But all of that changed pretty quickly as I began to move through the town.  

The more I walked, the more I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The houses were neat and tidy and the sidewalks were well-maintained. Shops were clean and well-stocked and even though it was the dead of winter, there were pleasing flower beds lining the road. 

Oswiecim, it turned out, on the surface at least, was a rather pleasant town. I may even go so far as to say that it was somewhat idyllic. Which frankly, worried me even more than the hobos and skinheads.

But I couldnt help feeling that something felt wrong. What few people I did see all hurried by me. Disappearing into nearby shops or apartments. I suppose it didn’t help that a complete stranger was wandering through their town in the middle of winter while a global pandemic was in full force. 

Beyond the shops and apartments I happened upon a very nice-looking school, and right next to that was a vast and well-appointed playground. I had been walking for the best part of 20 minutes and had to be getting close to my destination. 

I glanced around to see what looked suspiciously like an officer’s barracks, and then next to that, behind a carefully planted line of trees, a large free-standing brick chimney rising up. 

“Surely not,” I thought to myself. 

I turned around and stared at the playground, and then back again at the chimney.

“You’ve got to be shitting me”

I’m not sure I would have been thrilled knowing that my son was growing up in the shadow of perhaps the greatest instrument of death the world had ever known. I could just imagine his first day at Oswiecim Prep. 

“Right boys and girls,” obviously, I am loosely translating from the original Polish.

“Today we are going to talk about the history of our beautiful town, including the industrial boom between 1939 and 1944 and of course, the slew of war crimes committed just over those trees.”

It was fast becoming a theme as once again, I shook my head and walked off.

I got a bit lost finding my way through the former barracks. But eventually, with Auschwitz coming into view, something altogether more sinister caught my attention.

Which, considering where I was, was saying something. I stopped. I stared. And then wondered why my mouth was hanging open?

Across the road from Auschwitz. And for those of you who have been living under a rock, would undoubtedly rank in the top half of the ten most evil places in the world. Was The Imperial Hotel, with facilities for campers and camper vans. 

Again, I found myself staring in one direction at the entrance to a death camp and then in the other direction at a 4-star hotel. 

So much was wrong with this situation. And the irony of my rant was not lost on me. Me the tourist whinging about a hotel. But 4-star luxury across the road from Auschwitz was just wrong. I pictured my parents arriving in their Toyota Hilux, popping their roof-top tent and sitting down to a relaxing drink… while staring at Auschwitz.

It was absurd.

I checked their rating on Booking.com. 

9,4 for location.

What the hell? Who in there life time would have ever thought that neighbouring Auschwitz would help you achieve a near-perfect score for location?

You know, I could forgive the school. They had to build it where the town told them to, but the Hotel choose to be here. 

9.3 for comfort. 

I had no objection to a comfy bed, but the thought of living it up in a first-floor suite with a view over one of humanity’s greatest atrocities gave me the shivers.

Next to the hotel was a restaurant, and next to that another restaurant.

It wasn’t exactly war profiteering, but it didn’t feel far off. There were no souvenirs or T-shirts vendors but I was pretty sure that come summer, they would be out in full force receiving a 9.5 for convenience. 

I took a deep breath. It wasn’t even 10 am. I hadn’t even begun to experience the horrors of Auschwitz. But already I knew one thing for certain. 

Beware of anyone from Oswiecim. That is travel top #7