Prague, Krakow, and Auschwitz

Prague

On our last day in Prague, we spent the morning visiting the Jewish quarter, including the beautiful Spanish Synagogue, the Altneueschul, Maisel Synagogue, and Pinkas Syngagogue, which has been converted into a Holocaust memorial. Among the names of Czech Holocaust victims on the walls at Pinkas, we kept seeing the surname Margolius--the Czech spelling of Kelly's maiden name, Margolis. We also saw Weissbrod, which is equivalent to Jacob's mother's name, Weissbrodt. We were able to walk through the very crowded Jewish cemetery outside the memorial afterward.

We spent the rest of the day visiting the Wallenstein Palace and the Frank Kafka museum, then boarded a 9:00 p.n. train to Krakow, Poland. We didn't bother to buy tickets for the sleeper car, so we spent the next 9 hours sleeping across the benches of our lovely second-class compartment.

Krakow

We arrived in Krakow early in the morning and were greeted abruptly by some cold wind and rain. We spent the day walking around town and visiting various cathedrals--all of which were freezing inside--and the Wawel Castle, also quite chilly inside. We retired to the heat of a sporting goods store where we happened upon the shoes described in our earlier post.

Auschwitz

Today we got up and went for a run in Krakow, then boarded a bus for Auschwitz. We walked through the barracks of the camp looking at the exhibits that have been set up in each barrack. We read about daily life in Auschwitz, and how shoes were confiscated and warm clothes kept to a minimum. Today was a cold, rainy day in March, and despite being dressed in clean, warm clothing, we were cold walking through Auschwitz. We could not imagine how the prisoners suffered barefoot in the Polish winter. It was a somber visit, and we've spent the rest of the day thinking of the 1.1 million Jews that were murdered on this site in a harmless, quiet little town in Poland.

We are off to Warsaw tomorrow, and on to Berlin soon after that.