Week thirteen: (07/05/12-13/05/12) Cultural - Fort VII

As this blog might be read by someone who is planning to go to Poznan on Erasmus, something I would like to highlight is to visit the concentration camp: Fort VII. Whilst my boyfriend, Liam and two friends, Jonny and Stevie were visiting they asked to visit the camp and I was in complete shock that there was one in Poznan! Not one person had mentioned there was a concentration camp here and my Erasmus friends seemed just as surprised. I would definitely recommend that people visit the camp as it was one of the best ways to show visually (through models, exhibitions and pictures) some key events during the Holocaust. However, the camp is not set up for ‘promoting tourism’, it is for remembrance, therefore does not have English descriptions to explain the exhibits (so it is important to research the camp beforehand.)

Fort VII was created to exterminate people with Special Needs and disabilities. When you first enter the camp it has memorials inside each of the three gas chambers, with the names and ages of the people who were murdered. When you go further into the camp there are prisons with stone models (shown in the pictures) skulls and barbed wire. The museum section shows pictures and an exhibition of the medical experiments. It was hard for me to walk through this section as I couldn’t imagine what the children, twins, and disabled people would have went through on those medical beds. The last section of the museum has pictures of eight different concentration camps in Europe, each with their name and photos surrounding it. It is disturbing to see all the photos with people smiling whilst doing these terrible things to human beings.

At Auschwitz I had been told that during a Polish child’s education they must visit a concentration camp, as the Holocaust had such a dramatic effect on Poland’s history. If I was to compare the importance of remembering history to our situation at home, it surrounds the question should the children in our schools be taught about ‘The Troubles,’ by visiting museums and places of significance at least once in their school career? Although many people may currently feel that the conflict is a ‘thing of the past,’ Northern Ireland is hugely divided through religion, due to its history – even within the university I attend.

It is important for people to remember the past as it can still have an impact on the future. I am aware that by teaching about the Troubles in schools it can create other problems e.g. religions having different perspectives, (bias towards one side), as well as knowing what age is appropriate for the children to begin learning about certain events. However, I personally feel I wasn’t educated enough on Northern Ireland in school and felt I could have benefitted from this. The Ulster Museum has now dedicated a whole section to the history of the Troubles, which is a good example of how teachers can introduce the topic. It is strange that my Erasmus friends were taught about the history of Northern Ireland in school and I was not!  

Week twelve: (30/05/12-06/05/12) Cultural - Vienna and Prague

The Erasmus Policy statement highlights one of the aims of the Erasmus Programme is: “to enable them (students) to extend their knowledge of the cultures of other European countries and to approach their studies from a point of view of a different culture.” From being on Erasmus for less than three months it has allowed me to experience a vast variety of cultures within a short space of time. It has made me aware of how small Northern Ireland and Ireland are in comparison to the rest of Europe, yet I haven’t travelled around them! This is something I plan to do more this summer when I am home.

This week Poland has celebrated a number of National holidays which has resulted in the three of us having some time off our studies, so DarÓma and I decided to make use of our time and travel. After our visit to Krakow we set off to our next two destinations, Vienna and Prague! In nine days we travelled a total of thirty three hours by train, this might seem like a long time however it flies by when you have first class beds! At this stage of our trip we can happily say we have crammed as much culture into a week as possible, as well as fitting in some fun activities too.

Vienna

Vienna is the capital city of Austria, having a total population of 1.7 million people, who speak the German language. I sometimes found it difficult to adjust to the different languages being spoken after getting more familiar with Polish. It made me feel guilty for my lack of knowledge on languages as it is typical for people in Europe to be able to speak two or three languages! We started our adventure in Vienna with a little more fun than culture visiting a Theme Park and Madame Tussauds (Wien). Although we had fun taking pictures next to all the famous stars, it also highlighted to us famous people who were from Vienna, I had previously had been unaware of, such as the artist, Klimt and the composer, Mozart.

After recovering from the sickening rides at the theme park we thought it was time to explore Vienna on a more cultural level visiting the National Museum, attending an Opera and walking around the Schönbrunn Palace. The Schönbrunn Palace is one of the most important cultural monuments in the country as it was once home to the Habsburg monarchs. DarÓma and I were in awe at the grand scale of the gardens – the Palace, fountains, a maze, and a zoo! Vienna has been one of my favourite places to visit as there is so much to see and do. I am always surprised by the kindness of local people who are willing to help you when you are lost or suggest things you can do, even without asking.

Prague

Our next stop was to one of the seven most visited cities in Europe, Prague, having a population of 1.3 million people. I felt there were fewer things to do in Prague in comparison to Krakow and Vienna however, there were plenty of attractive areas to see, especially the main Square. In the main Square there is the Clock Tower, which is the oldest astronomical clock in the world that is still working. I would advise anyone to go and see the Clock at night as the whole Square looks more beautiful. We had both fooled ourselves into believing that Prague would be cheap, however after being used to polish currency, it was close to the prices at home! Looking back on all we experienced this week it is hard to believe that more university students don’t take the opportunity to do Erasmus!

Reference

The Erasmus Policy Statement:          http://www.up.krakow.pl/erasmus/

Week eleven: (26/04/12-01/05/12) Cultural (Auschwitz)

When it had been confirmed that DarÓma, Michael and I would be going to Poland on Erasmus I knew it would be important to visit Auschwitz during the four months we would be living there. In the past I have visited a concentration camp in Berlin – Sachsenhausen - but was told this was nothing in comparison to what I would experience in Auschwitz. I also think it has had a significant impact on Polish culture and history as I had mentioned in a previous blog that the Holocaust wiped out ten per cent of Poland’s total population over sixty years ago. Although I had tried to get myself mentally prepared for the trip I still felt anxious about how it would impact me.

If I’m honest I was disappointed with how commercial Auschwitz had become. On one hand I would not have had the opportunity to experience the death camp if it had not been open to the public on such a huge scale (nearly seven thousand visitors a day) however; the shops and queues of people distracted me from being fully absorbed by my surroundings. On the other hand our tour guide challenged our group through asking difficult questions and kept us focused on the cruelty people suffered. The first question she asked which stuck with me was why we had chosen to visit Auschwitz, rather than the seven other camps in Poland, where just as many or more had died. She said that Auschwitz’s popularity was due to its survivors. In Auschwitz there had been over forty thousand survivors, whereas Belzec had only two and others ranged from between a hundred to ten. This meant more people could tell their stories, making Auschwitz the best known of the camps. This information made me look at old people from Poland in a whole new light as someone over ninety could have lived through the First World War, Second World War and the Cold War!

Over the day we visited Auschwitz 1 and 2 (Birkenau). Birkenau kept around one hundred thousand workers, both men and women, with a separate block for children. The beds seen in the pictures held eight people or more and prisoners were given less than eight hundred calories a day. They woke at 5am and worked until late, with two toilet trips during the day. We were told their life span in the camp was around two or three months. The guide also told us no survivors ever mentioned seeing any children in the camp, even though some were kept for a short period of time. I found entering the children’s block to be one of the most difficult parts of my visit to Auschwitz because it was hard to even believe. Something I didn’t know was that many Polish children with blue eyes and blonde hair were sent to Germany to be “Germanised.” The guide told us that after the war less than ten per cent of these children returned to Poland because they were too young to remember.

They also kept some families together in separate areas (living there for six months), so they could manipulate them into writing letters to family and friends at home, convincing them to come to such concentration camps where they would have a ‘better’ life. Throughout the Second World War it was evident that Hitler planned to wipe out other races and within Auschwitz alone a single S.S. Doctor could sterilise up to a thousand Jewish girls a day.

It is important that people do experience these death camps, or even watch movies about the Holocaust as it is apparent how evil humanity can be when ‘mislead.’ The camp showed me how easily people can be manipulated to believe something, as well how much they are willing to ignore. One quotation by George Santayana really stood out to me from the visit (shown in the picture.) This experience surrounded an aspect of Polish history that I will always remember.