So I am back to the written form for this one, photos and flippant commentary just wouldn’t be enough to convey the emotions of a quite extraordinary day. We arrived at Oswiecem, Poland after dark on Thursday night after our epic drive from Slovakia and through the Czech Republic, we parked up on the visitor centre car park with the most genuinely chilling view from the van window overnight. Oswiecem was renamed Auschwitz by the nazis during WW2 and the infamous railway siding for the Berkanau concentration camp was that view.

We joined our 9am guided tour of both Auschwitz and Berkanau, something we had both wanted to do for many years. Although we were already aware of the horrors and mass murder that took place here between 1940 and 1945 we felt it was important to visit, learn more and do our little bit to ensure the stories of those who suffered and died is never forgotten. During the Auschwitz tour we recoiled at some of the barbaric punishments and walked in silence through gas chambers where so many people died. Seeing the personal belongings left behind was just awful, from suitcases marked with names as people hoped for a better life as they were forcibly removed from their homes through to the shoes of tiny children.

We saw photographs of terrified families being separated and assessed for usefulness to the nazi regime. Those not deemed not useful being sent to die almost immediately while the useful ones got to suffer for weeks and months before suffering the same fate. At Berkanau we walked on the same ground we had seen in the photographs alongside the railway tracks and the sense of horror was almost too much. To see the remains of what can only be described as the industrial scale machinery of genocide, designed and constructed with pre-meditated intent was deeply shocking to me.

“For ever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, where the nazis murdered about one and a half million men, women, and children, mainly jews from various countries of Europe.”

Neither Caroline or I felt it was appropriate to take photographs during our visits, although it was permitted to do so in most areas of the camps, with the exception of the plaques written in different languages carrying the words above we chose to keep phones in our pockets until back outside. This was just one example of a time this last week when the two of us were just naturally on the exact same wavelength. As we then drove for 4 hours or so to Wroclaw there were quite a few comfortable silences followed by discussion and processing of the things we had seen that morning. But hey, we also laughed along that journey just like every other journey this week, we are on holiday after all!

On arrival in Wroclaw, at a proper camp site for a change, we then busied ourselves getting dogs exercised and fed and then getting ready for a night out in the town for what would be the last night of our little holiday together. A tram into town and a pleasantly warm evening meant a few beers and good food could be enjoyed outside in the old town square, we thoroughly enjoyed Wroclaw and will definitely return for a longer stay in the future.