The Flickr Oświeçim Image Generatr

This train appears to be an Alstom Traxx 185 or 186 model. It's kind of hard to figure out, because HSL is a German train-operating company, and Akiem appears to be a train-rental company.
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While trying to figure out what kind of train (and by "train", I mean locomotive) this is, I happened upon the website below, which has all sorts of details about it. This particular locomotive (ET22-1060) was built in 1987, and appears to have those rectangular-framed headlights installed in 1999. Most of the pictures of ET22 trains I saw on the Internet had headlights enclosed in a bigger, round frame.

ilostan.forumkolejowe.pl/index.php?nav=lok&typ=1&...
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I took the bus from Birkenau back to Auschwitz I, picked up my huge backpack, and walked to the municipal bus stop and waited about 15 minutes. I got on the 1 bus, which (in this case) was retro brown on the inside, and took it to Oświeçim train station. I took a few pics from the footbridge over the track, as a few teenagers wrote graffiti on it.

Here we see a Koleje Ślåskie EN57AKŚ train.
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One last picture before I got on the bus back to Kraków.

I can't figure out what car this is. Does anyone know?
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When the official tour of Auschwitz was over, the tour guide asked if any of us wanted to go up in the tower above the infamous gate of death, as that required permission of a tour guide. Naturally I said yes.

Up here, it was easier to see the scale of the camp. You can see the ramp where victims were unloaded from the trains on a side track, to be sent either to the gas chambers or to work.

You can see some tour groups clustered on the main walkway and the ramp.

A lof of the camp on the right was never completed, to my understanding, although several buildings on the left still stand.

The distance from my vantage point here to the trees at the end of the tracks is at least 1 kilometer. Width-wise, Auschwitz II-Birkenau is about 3km wide.

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The women who weren't immediately sent to the gas chambers and ended up as prisoners slept here. It was desirable to secure the top bunk, because human waste naturally falls toward the center of gravity.

It's bad enough to imagine sleeping on boards. Can you imagine sleeping on the cold, uneven ground, soiled with all manner of fluids and dirt?
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Ruins of prisoner barracks, with what look like partly-destroyed fireplaces, stand silent in the cool March afternoon, while the death gate looms behind them.
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75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz and the end of the Holocaust (when I took this picture in 2020), the most notorious site of the Final Solution sits sprawling in a light March rain. A storage area for restoration materials hides behind a screen fence on the left, while an old building stands behind an electric fence on the right; the sewage treatment plant is off-screen behind it. Water in a drainage ditch reflects the pale sky above it, and points toward a house in the distance (most likely on Pławianka) where laundry hangs on a clothesline. About 18km further away, the Beskid Mountains are visible.

Imagine hanging your laundry on the line and seeing the ruins of a concentration camp in your back yard.
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"To the memory of the men, women, and children who fell victim to the Nazi genocide. Here lie their ashes. May their souls rest in peace."
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The Auschwitz exhibit just opened at the ROM the other day. I plan to go to it, even though obviously I've seen the remains of Auschwitz in person.
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The passing of time brings changes, whatever they may be worth; whether good or bad. Sometimes it intrudes on the sense of authenticity, but only if you pay attention to it.

By the time I visited Auschwitz, the Holocaust and World War Two had ended 75 years earlier. Of course the areas around these places have changed.

In terms of Auschwitz, I don't think the changes within the area are in poor taste. I just noticed that in the distance are two mid-rise apartment buildings. But, in a world where most governments are focused on growth, growth, growth, on a planet with a finite surface area, growth will continue to encroach on areas it shouldn't.

I imagine eventually Auschwitz will be demolished and turned into a Wal-Mart, or an Amazon warehouse. I said eventually.

Sure, it's protected now, but that status was created by humans and can therefore be revoked by humans, much like how "democracy in America" only remains "the way" as long as the people want it. And more and more, voters in the Western world are voting against democratic candidates in favor of authoritarians who will happily take their rights away.

When I read Mein Kampf in 2018, I noticed that there were a lot of elements of Hitler's vision and plan that Donald Trump enacted in his first presidency, especially regarding the media as the enemy of the people and (for example) using his troops to arrest journalists covering the George Floyd protests. To a much lesser extent, Doug Ford has done similar things, and so did Stephen Harper during his reign.

Anyone getting all up in a huff about what I just said has clearly not read Mein Kampf, because what I said is correct. Obviously Donald Trump hasn't built extermination camps, but he absolutely borrowed pages from Hitler's playbook.

Also, I will delete comments trying to equate Trudeau or Obama to Hitler, so don't bother. Nobody's forcing you to comment on this post.
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This cattle car (or many like it) would have transported Holocaust victims to their deaths. Many died in the cars themselves on the way.
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After I got a few pictures of Auschwitz's notorious entrance gate, I looked around and got a sense of how big Birkenau really was -- or tried to. It was enormous. I couldn't even describe it in terms of football fields. And no wonder. Yesterday I looked it up on ChatGPT. Auschwitz II - Birkenau is about the same size as 322 football fields.

322 football fields' worth of space devoted to humiliating, enslaving, and killing over a million people.
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At the end of the tour of Auschwitz I, the tour guide told us how to get to Auschwitz II - Birkenau, for those of us who wanted to continue. For me, Birkenau was the whole point of going -- to Auschwitz; to Poland; and you could even say to Europe itself on that trip. About half of the tour group didn't get on the free shuttle bus, which was just as well.

After a short bus ride, we arrived at the other side of this gate building -- the most infamous symbol of the Holocaust.
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Crematorium I at Auschwitz I was also used as a gas chamber from late 1941 to December 1942, before gassing was moved to the nearby Auschwitz II (Birkenau) camp.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp#Gas_ch...
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Barbed wire surrounds a pathway at Auschwitz I. The little white posts that attach the wires to the concrete fenceposts suggest that these wires were electrified.

I'm sure they were electrified based on electrification of other concentration camp fences; I just don't remember what the tour guide said.
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The sign says "Booth where the SS man responsible for conducting the roll-call and collecting reports on the number of prisoners took shelter during inclement weather."

Of course, the prisoners weren't allowed to take shelter and were often required to stand outside in rain, snow, or freezing temperatures for hours at a time.
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I've noticed that I'm good at getting pictures of the backs of people's heads. Oh, the life of an introvert photographer.

Having said that, it would have been inappropriate at Auschwitz to shout "Hey everybody! Look this way!"
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On the morning of Day 12, I went down to the large and spacious buffet at the Hampton by Hilton Oświeçim, where there were a few other men by themselves eating breakfast. I went back up to my room and packed my stuff, and noted in my trip journal how efficient it was to pack different things into different sub-bags. I had grocery bags for socks, underwear, shirts, dirty laundry, snacks, and toiletries, which made it much easier to grab what I needed out of a tall, cylindrical backpack.

I checked out of the hotel around 9:30am and walked to the bus stop. I got on the 1 bus, which dropped me off just outside the Auschwitz I parking lot. I dropped off my gigantic backpack in a little yellow building, and went inside the main building to wait for my tour group to materialize.

Auschwitz was the climax of my Europe 2020 trip. It wasn't so much the highlight of the trip that stood far above the rest of what I saw, but it was the biggest reason why I went to Europe in the first place. I had wanted to visit Auschwitz on my first Europe trip in 2008, but I was with my family that time and the Eurail pass we bought didn't cover Poland. Since my 2020 trip was a solo trip, I could do whatever I wanted.

The grounds of Auschwitz I were busier than I expected for early March (and during the early escalation of a pandemic that would soon engulf the planet), although really I shouldn't have been surprised; Wikipedia says over 2.3 million people visited Auschwitz in 2019.

A tour guide showed up who had a Polish name but sounded like my Peruvian former coworker Melinda. She spoke very quietly, so the headphones helped. I would have taken this picture of a group ahead of us while waiting for our tour to start.

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This was the fanciest meal I had on my Europe 2020 trip.

That evening, I left the hotel and went next door to the Stone Café Bar & Restaurant for supper, which I believe is the #1 restaurant in Oświeçim. I think I might have been the only customer there, though. I had the duck with potatoes au gratin, parsnips, and mushed peas. For dessert, I had a little apple pie covered in a hard shell of white chocolate and a scoop of ice cream.
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