I've always wanted to visit one Mutters. I think Poolymad has been, if I remember right.

I have been to Auschwitz. It's a very depressing place. It was in three parts, the camp where they all lived, the one with 'Arbeit Macht Frei' over the gate, the camp you always see in the films with the train line and the arches, but they managed to destroy the factory where they made them work. In the place where they lived, it's like an Army barracks and all the corridors are lined with thousands of pictures with details of where they were from, the date they got there and the date they died. Some of these pictures have a flower behind them where a relative has come and visited.

I could go on for hours, but to answer one of your questions, when you go down to the memorial at the bottom of the railhead, right near the gas chambers, no, the birds didn't sing, it was perfectly silent.

I just back from Krakow and visited Auschwitx and Birkenau, and although very moving, and as previously said everyone should visit, the stories of birds not flying over are I found incorrect, I saw some though for the area not as many as you would normally expect.

The glass cases with suitcases, glasses personnel effects and hair shaved from prisoners shows just what the prisoners went through.

The different types of cells, the standing cells, the dark cells, the execution wall between blocks 10 and 11. The cell were a priest died, giving up his life to save another is still there and shown on tours. Some of the gas chambers/ crematorium still stand, the crematoriun the Germans blow up to try and hide evidence still lays as it did the day it was blown up. Gallows were prisoners were hanged in front of others have been reconstructed as they would have been, the gallows used to hang the first commandant of the camp (Hoess) aklso stands though was more reconstructed.

Prisoners only allowed to wash and use toilet at specific times, when waking and before bed, being punished if doing it at any other times.

Auschwitz is in fact the German name as the camp stands at Oswiecem

Going around both camps, you can feel the torture the prisoners went through bunk beds were up to 10 prisoners slept together(in each bed) not a dormitory.

Although moving and in parts harrowing to a point Im glad I went and would recommend other's go, to see what conditions were like and to see the musuem (as it is now). I will go to my grave knowing that those atrocities took place and no one who attempts to say it didn't happen will convince me they are correct.

In one of the huts is a stone with the words inscribed,

Those who deny history exists, will relive history. ( may not be word for word) But a truer word has never ben spoken. How many other ethnic cleansing wars have occured since then, we can all name some.

Auschwitz stands as a memorial to those that suffered, for that reason and that reason alone, no one should deny history.

Everything that Bob said
and he said it well

It was a very warm day when we went and I was sat having a breather and sip of water when someone pointed out I was sitting on the spot that Rudolf Hoess, camp commander, was hanged! The one thing that struck me most was the mechanical way they dealt with the prisoners and how every item and I mean every item was reused.
utterley detached of human feeling.
The other thing was how just one mans hatred of another could stir up such evil in so many others and it wasn't long ago.

A must see and feel experience, but not in a tourist sense.

To cheers your self up afterwards visit the salt mines they are class

Do you mean the ones where they have the carvings all over the place?? That one of the Last Supper carved in relief is fantastic, it's almost 3-D when you move past it. Also the Seven Dwarfs are class.

Thats the one Mr Spender! utterly amazing!!

As for the seven dwarfs...

Been there also a couple of years ago. Agree with all the above, but my over riding memory was that it was far to crowded and the tour guide only mentioned tthe Jews not any others who where exterminated

Poolymad has been and it is something I will never forget,agree with Bob and Paddy it is a must see place but a VERY humbling one.

How human beings can do this to each other is beyond belief,I went with GeoffN and our wives and hardly a word was said amongst us as we went round with our guide.

Agree with the salt mines they are BRILL.

Sorry Mr Paddy, I forgot.....

Last week people on this board reckoned the racist attacks in Luton were justified,thats pretty much the first step towards the kind of hatred that led to ethnic cleansing.

Are you refering to racist attacks perpetrated by scumbags on returning soldiers? Racism of any sort is disgusting that includes the hate spouted from so called "religous" fundamentalists

(quote)Last week people on this board reckoned the racist attacks in Luton were justified,thats pretty much the first step towards the kind of hatred that led to ethnic cleansing.[/quote]

Anyone who justifies any attack on anyone for whatever reason beggers belief.

Gary Gibson??

Im referring to the Asian man that was assaulted & the restaurant that had its windows smashed.
I fully agree that the behaviour of those shouting abuse at the returning troops was disgusting,but it doesnt excuse random attacks
Heres two posts from that thread

And to think that 1300 people voted for the BNP in the Mayoral elections.............frightening

It's not really when you talk to older people in the town who's horizons start a blackall and end at Greatham, never leaving a town with few minorities why do you think the BNP ran for Hartlepool in the First place.

And let's not forget that Britain was the first country to use concentration camps (as they known) during the first Boer War in South Africa.(Under Lord Kitchener)

Not to the extent of the Nazi's during the Second World War but nevertheless the first.

The Nazi's weren't the only ones to perpetrate mass genocide against the Jew's either...

I have been to Dachau. Didn't live too far from it when I was on my year abroad. The visit itself was quite a surreal experience, as I visited on the 60th anniversary of its liberation, and all the wreaths and tributes from various religious groups and nations were laid around the grounds, which was quite overwhelming.

As mentioned before, the atmosphere was very eerie and there was definitely a real sense that something evil once happened there.

I went to Belson about 15 years ago when my brother was posted nearby.

Very eerie as I remember, there were large plots of land in the middle of the camp where nothing was growing - nothing would grow as the land was where bodies were buried, well that's how the legend was told. What made it worse, I was there in the morning and a layer of mist hovered just above the plots of land in question.

Spent a day at Yad Vashem - the Jewish Holocaust Museum outside Jerusalem.
A huge room with thousands of photos of people who were murdered - including children
Chilling sculptures and rooms full of items taken from the concentration camps such as those already mentioned.
When you live in Israel as I did you can understand why they are such a paranoid nation still.
Would like to visit a concentration camp but will wait until my children are teenagers as I wouldnt want to expose them to such things until then...

I went to Easington once, truly horrific.

Colliery, Lane or Village There is a difference

And lets not forget the bloke who was beheaded in the desert last week by dare i say it muslim terrorists.

I went to Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg (ex. East Germany) as part of a school trip to Berlin two years ago. It was a chilling experience, but I'm glad I went there.

I went inside the mortuary and got chills down my spine.

Of course you dare say it & we all would like to see those responsible convicted of murder.