I made a solemn trip to Poland to visit Auschwitz, a moving experience that was even more harrowing than my visit to Dachau a few months earlier. This trip report will recount my journey to Warsaw, Krakow, and finally Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Poland Trip Report – Warsaw, Krakow, And Auschwitz-Birkenau
I’m at a point in my life in which I grapple often with sin, death, and human depravity. My Christian faith informs my worldview and I welcome the chance to wrestle with apologetical questions like, “Why does God allow human suffering?”
My visit to Dachau was so moving that I determined to travel Auschwitz-Birkenau as soon as possible. An opportunity arose when a friend and I decided to spend a weekend in Poland, which gave me the opportunity to actually spend time in Warsaw outside the airport terminal and then drive to Krakow.
I’ll offer far more commentary as I detail my visit to the concentration camps, but visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau is something every person should do. When you encounter the brutal efficiency of the entire operation you cannot help but to mourn.
On a lighter note, both Warsaw and Krakow are great cities and I love the Polish people and how far dollar goes in Poland. I enjoyed some great food and drink which I will be detailing as well.
The trip took place last October, but in rolling out one trip report after another, I’ve held back on this one for several months. I wanted to publish my massive summer report first and with that trip report now complete, I can move on to this one. I did no “teasers” for this trip, so all content is 100% fresh.
Stay tuned for the following segments in this report:
- Diamond Lounge Brussels (BRU)
- Brussels Airlines “The Loft” Lounge Brussels (BRU)
- LOT Polish E-190 Business Class Brussels – Warsaw
- Sheraton Grand Warsaw
- Photo Essay: Warsaw, Poland
- Delicious Georgian Food In Warsaw
- Great Coffee In Warsaw
- DoubleTree Krakow
- Where To Eat And Drink In Krakow
- Mr. Black, The Coolest Cocktail Bar In Krakow
- Reflections On Visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau
- Photo Essay: Auschwitz-Birkenau
- Business Lounge Schengen Krakow (KRK)
- LOT Polish 787-9 Business Class Warsaw – Chicago
- Hyatt Regency Chicago O’Hare
Thanks for reading!
i’m flying lot polish in 6 days so i’m hoping you enjoyed it
Sadly, it was bad.
I’m sorry to hear about your negative experience with LOT. On the one hand, their pilots are skilled and they are good with logistics but they have never been famous for catering. I travel in the back of the plane and for a while, there was nothing free but water. The FA made a cart trip selling premium coffee for 4zl (about a dollar) and almost nobody bought it so she probably poured it down the toilet. Pity. After that, they did provide beverages and a small snack.
I can hardly wait for your multiple reports. I hope the spelling and grammar checkers go easy on you!
LOT had some deals on Premium Economy for September from ORD to KRK for $1,500 back in March. Unfortunately I didn’t know what to expect from the travel restrictions so didn’t bother to book at the time. It’s too bad American Airlines 787 from ORD to KRK got cancelled because of the pandemic. That would have been a great use of miles.
Yup.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
A lesson that, sadly, it seems we have to learn over and over again.
I’m setting up a guys trip in April that will include Krakow so I’m thrilled to hear this.
How many of us are familiar with Roman history? Most of us. How many of us are familiar with Greek history? Most of us.
How many know about incan, chinese, Japanese, indian, Persian, byzantine, carthaginian, zulu history? Why?
The holocaust is well known only for one reason, and one reason only. Figure it out. There have been many genocides before and after the jewish holocaust. Why don’t people make a pilgrimage to those genocides?
It’s time people that are neither jewish ancestry nor german ancestry to glorify the signifance of this period. We have no connection to this and we shouldn’t have to care.
F*** you, nazi scum.
@Matthew, you going to allow this sh** to use your site to preach his hate?
What makes you think I haven’t made other pilgrimages? As a matter of fact, I have in Bosnia, Cambodia, and Armenia. And even recently in the apartheid museum in J’Berg, which may not have been a genocide but was an ugly and extended chapter of human history.
Good for you. But my comments was very generalized. Jewish holocaust was a very specific history, specific to jews. Many people in the world were living under imperialist rulers and probably had never met a jew or didn’t know where Germany was, much less have anything to do with the holocaust. Given that, the jewish holocaust seems to suck most of the oxygen at the expense of everything else.
I think most people should start pushing back at this collective guilt foisted on them when they or their ancestors had nothing to do with it. Case in point, that bupkiss idiot that wants us to keep feeling guilty.
I’m not Jewish, but had relatives fighting with the Yugoslav Partisans during WWII who were shipped to Nazi camps in Bavaria and Croatia and who endured the exact same treatment as the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The Holocaust was not a solely Jewish extermination – and that is made clear during visits I’ve made to every Holocaust Memorial I’ve visited – but a Nazi attempt to rid Europe of Jews, Slavs deemed non-Aryan, Roma, intellectuals, LGBT, the political left, and basically any group of people who were deemed undesirable by the party leadership. Yes, Jews were the most numerous victims, but they weren’t alone, nor, in my experience, do they ever pretend or claim to be. If anything, it’s a point of common pain that has brought me closer to friends in many of the affected communities.
@Matt – Good on you for visiting the sites. Don’t stop visiting these places.
Debit wants you to forget about the holocaust so he and his ilk can perpetrate another genocide. Sorry pal, we aren’t going to forget so you and your republican friends will just have to stick to blowing away kids at schools and parades. We are on to you.
Because it’s recent & many people have/had relatives that fought to liberate the camps or died in them. It touches the lives of families of the soldiers that want to appreciate & learn about the liberation fight & victims. It’s part of why Germany maintains the camps & memorials. We should never forget. Learning about one attrocity does not exclude any other. You own your own guilt or likely shame that you feel & no one else.
“Jewish holocaust was a very specific history, specific to jews”. Adolf likes that! Make Germany great again!
@Matthew, you are really going to allow this crazy Debit nazi speech in your site? This is “freedom”? Really?
Yes. The answer to speech is more speech. A very American-centric viewpoint, but I’m a huge believer in that principle. I won’t block ideas, which you and others have done well to refute and I also condemn.
I’ll echo another comment above. The holocaust was and is horrible. But there are many horrible genocides. Pol Pot killed 2 million cambodians out of a population of 7 million (and by the way the US supported him since he wasn’t a communist). Why no posts encouraging travel to Phnom Phenh? Or Rwanda? Go visit the Killing Fields, go visit the notorious S21 prison. This all happened so recently, that many of the people that lived through it are still alive.
Sadly there are many, many examples of human depravity.
Did you see my comment above?
From 2017:
https://liveandletsfly.com/tuol-sleng-genocide-museum/
the comment showed up after I wrote mine…we were typing at the same time.
What was the flight to Brussels, it’s not getting a review?
United and I’m not going to review it – too out of date at this point with the old COVID service.
I am glad that you had a chance to visit my home country and my home city of Krakow…It is sad that this gem of a city, which easily rivals or even outclasses Prague has this great shadow of Nazism over it. I am wondering – why haven’t you flown directly from KRK with LOT?
Some of these comments are insane. How many of your readers would go to an alcoholics anonymous meeting and tell them to man up because other people are suffering too? Or go to an aids fundraiser and say “you’re robbing people with pancreatic cancer”. The lack of empathy and humility is astounding.
I spent a good part of my adolescence in Warsaw, and I can’t imagine any city on Earth ever being dearer to me. I can’t wait for this trip report! I’m most excited about that Sheraton review. Back in the 1990s, the Marriott, the Sheraton, and the Bristol were the only three games in town.
Years ago when Eastern Europe started to open up, I went with a group of friends to Krakow, one of our group had been born there during the communist era. The day before we left she said to me the hotel was very convenient and just round the corner from where we would be getting the bus to Auschwitz. At the time it hit my like a blow to the stomach but we all went along to a sobering place and learned a great deal.
Move forward a few years and a young colleague asked me about it and said he wanted to visit, I encouraged him to and then he asked me to go with him and so I agreed, I’d been before and I thought I could be helpful so off we went to Krakow and then made a day trip to Auschwitz.
All I will say is the second time was far more harrowing than the first. The site of the Auschwitz camp and the legacy it left is terrible to see but what was worse for me the second time was Birkenau, walking through the railway arch and along the path so many trod to the now destroyed gas chambers where so many died. I didn’t sleep for nights afterwards and it created a far deeper impression on me about the sheer inhumanity of the human race at times and of course there are less severe examples of it in our every day lives still and I’m not sure the lessons have been learned.
So go and see it, learn, but think carefully before you make a second visit. I will never return there.
On your next visit to Poland, make sure to visit the Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk. A very raw exhibit on the invasion of Poland by both Nazi Germany and Russia in 1939.
If you noticed how boldly Poland responded to the invasions of Ukraine, a tour of the museum will give you insight to the Polish mindset concerning Russia.
I’m of Polish Lithuanian heritage and frankly I’m tired of constant association with nazis,jews,ukrainians,concentration camps,gulags,blah,blah,blah,as if nothing else that happened there mattersThere is a rich legacy and history there,the early slavic and baltic shamans,great contributions to science,literature,humanism,etcI know Sweden took ww2holocaust studies off school curriculum,I can’t blame them.Poland ,like Germany,doesn’t have that option.But in stark contrast to the last century,,against all odds,Poland today is a dynamic prosperous EU nation.
No one has said that there is nothing to Poland but the concentration camps. I tried to show, even in my coffee review, that Warsaw was a vibrant city full of beautiful, happy people. But you have to concede that this is a huge part of the history that need not be balanced in every story with everything else that makes Poland Poland.
That was my point,there rarely seems to be any balance, everything leads down the holocaust path and I think enough time has passed that shouldnot continue.Does the world need another”Solemn Trip To Auschwitz” story,by a comfortable first world citizen? Apparently you think yes,I disagree.Have yor ever heard of the genocide launched by Ukrainian against Poles in ww2,far more blood curdling than the nazis.Of course not,the western media didn’t tell you it’s important.
As one commentator pointed out,Krakow is often overshadowed by the history of the nazi occupation,in the eurocentric mind anyway.But for one billion hindus,Krakow,the ground beneath Wawel castle,is one of the seven holy chakras of the earth believed to be eminating a powerful supernatural force.