Raining, dark, long drive behind us today, two-day drive ahead on Monday/Tuesday. I am visiting all the sites, with an expert, not a revisionist

Courtesy link: Official website of the Auschwitz State Museum in Poland

March 3, 2007 (Saturday)
Warsaw - Kraków (Poland))

IN the morning we go out in this Warsaw suburb to shop for food. There is a broad boulevard, much wider than London streets, but totally disfigured by a four-floor building left at the traffic's edge, derelict, rotting, and covered with graffiti, in the middle of the fine open space.

Why has this eyesore not been condemned and torn down twenty years ago? Alan can't explain, even excuses it. I say he is allowing Poland to rub off on him, instead of his Britishness to rub off on them.

There are a dozen large heaps of dog turd scattered around the space in front of his apartment block, and the elevator inside has buttons which are brown with unidentifiable human finger-grease. He attributes it to the communist legacy.

In the food store I buy a pack of those little Actimel bottles -- the water here is like Mexico's, too dangerous to drink. I open one on the way to the cash checkout and slurp it. A uniformed guard pounces on me and I am lucky not to be wheeled away.

We drive south all day to Krákow, because tomorrow we shall spend anonymously at Auschwitz with two television crews we are picking up here.

Jürgen G. emails: "... Über Sobibor gibt es seitens der Rev[isionisten] keine Monographie, weil es an Material fehlt; allenfalls für einen großen Artikel würde der Stoff reichen."

I reply at 19:47: "Bin heute in Krakau, Sie ahnen wohl weshalb. War in T[reblinka]. gestern. Bin mit einem zusammen, der gut polnisch spricht. S[obibór] wird uns besonders interessieren, auch B[elzec]. -- T. war deprimierend: alles wurde entfernt, sogar jetzt die Eisenbahnlinie. Unter den aufgefundenen Objekten (im Museum) waren Löffeln, Schüssel usw. aber nichts irgendwie Verdächtiges; die Stelle ist jedoch ganz offensichtlich eine Endstation gewesen und als solche gewählt worden, also keine Stelle wo man lediglich "durchgeschleust" wurde..." [a reference to the Korherr Report]

From our hotel we have a fine view of the castle here in Kraków, illuminated at night. The hotel is filled with American tourists and student groups, and not a few are chattering about the Auschwitz site they have come from, or are going to.

To the message from a Chicago correspondent I reply:

"I am feeling better, but present-day Poland sucks; filthy, primitive, dirty, hopeless, no sense of pride. Raining, dark; long drive behind us today, two-day drive ahead on Monday/Tuesday. I am visiting all the sites, with an expert, [who is] not a revisionist."          

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