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Auschwitz a 'potent memorial'
The continuing adventures of Driffield's intrepid explorer Steve Rudd see him visit the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland.
IT’S not everyday you get to witness a procession of cows along the main street of any western European town or city on a Saturday afternoon, let alone a country’s capital.
But then Liechtenstein is different, and its tiny capital of Vaduz has the relaxed air of a village. Its laid-back nature came as some revelation after Zurich in Switzerland.
Fascinating folk can be encountered anywhere, at any time and the train into Switzerland proved my point perfectly, for a middle-aged Mexican lady who had lived much of her life in Los Angeles shared my compartment, along with a Belgian film agent whose job depended on him successfully helping to promote and distribute all manner of independent movies.
Modest for the most part, he couldn’t refrain from gushing about how proud hed been to have had a hand in making the cult film Donnie Darko.
After checking into a Vaduz hostel I headed straight for the river, temporarily stepping back into Switzerland courtesy of a covered wooden bridge, the type of which is common in New England.
Staring longingly back into Liechtenstein, the high and mighty bulk of Vaduz Castle, which is 700 years old and the residence of the Princely Family, loomed on the hillside behind Vaduz.
It all seemed a far-cry from earlier on in the week when I entered Poland after time spent in Vilnius and Trakai in Lithuania.
Not for the fainthearted, a trip to Auschwitz Concentration Camp makes for a harrowing experience.
It does seem ironic that a place where the largest mass-murder in history took place has become one of Polands main tourist draws, yet the Auschwitz Experience has in no way been tastelessly transformed into anything other than what it deserves to be: a potent memorial.
Visitors are bombarded with appalling facts and figures related to what occurred there as soon as theyre led through the main gates and past the spine-chilling sight of merciless barbed wire. Perhaps the most traumatising part of the tour has its heart in the exhibition rooms in which personal artifacts that once belonged to people murdered there are displayed in huge glass cases.
A colossal mound of human hair, suitcases, toothbrushes, razorblades, and shoes: they all have their place. Its impossible not to be moved. It was the sight of a smashed porcelain doll lolling beside a well-worn pair of childrens shoes that set me off.Needless to say, the ride back to Krakow was riddled with silence, as people attempted to come to terms with the horrors that occurred during humanitys darkest hour.
Once back in Krakow, I caught the night train down to Vienna where I invested the morning in admiring the city’s wealth of amazing architecture.
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Weather for Driffield
Monday 21 May 2012
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Temperature: 7 C to 12 C
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