Mike Packwood

Difficult to know what to say about our visit to Auschwitz really. We were in Krakow, which is only an hour away, so really thought we should visit. For us it was a grey miserable damp day in November. But we were wrapped up warm, well fed and a cup of coffee was only a few minutes away. God knows what it was like for the inmates.  There is a corridor in one of the blocks with photographs of some of the inmates - the Germans were very good at accurate record keeping - which showed that typically, unless you were killed immediately on arrival, you would last about 6 months...whilst being worked to death at the IG Farben chemical works nearby, where one of the products you would be making was the Zyklon-B cyanide based pesticide that would ultimately be used to kill you when it was dropped through the hole in the roof of a gas chamber. The piles of glasses, mountains of hair - used to make felt boots amongst other things - baby clothes, suitcases, shoes, electrified fen...