"Arbeit Macht Frei."

"Work sets you free."

We arrived in Krakow last night and we got snow.
It's quite fitting, as today we went to Auschwitz and I think any movie I have ever seen about life in "the camp" has always been covered in snow.
I must admit I wasn't quite prepared for the effect today's visit was going to have on me. It actually made me feel physically sick. Of course reading history books and watching films on TV can have some emotional effect on you, but nothing like being exposed to the real thing. Obviously I didn't live through the 'real experience', but just being there and seeing the sheer scale on which such atrocities were carried out is very overwhelming. Couple this with endless haunting photographic displays, walls covered in 'mugshots' and floral tributes scattered about to visitor's dead family members and you have a recipe for being smacked in the face with a reality that is much easier to deal with when it's in a two dimensional form while quickly being flicked past in the pages of a high school history book.
What will forever be etched in my memory however are the displays which held belongings of the people who were taken taken to Auschwitz. It is impossible to describe, but walking in to a 20 meter long hall with 5 meter deep floor to ceiling glass cases either side of you filled with the shoes of those who lived and died there can really take your breath away. In another room, tooth brushes and hair brushes and razors. In another room - children's shoes and clothes. In another room suitcases and so it goes on. All belongings of people who were to face life in one of the worst death camps ever in existence.