From our own correspondents: January 27, 2005 The Great Day Out at Auschwitz An insufficiently respectful conformist reports: I went to Auschwitz on Thursday and experienced a real Polish welcome there. The train journey down was pleasant although R. who had agreed to meet me at the station did not turn up. I took an intercity train to Krakow and then got on a local train to Oswiêcim [Auschwitz]. I met a postman from Liverpool on the train who had come especially for the ceremony with a friend of his. On arrival at Oswiêcim it turned out that there was no public transport or for that matter any transport. I said I know where it is, follow me. The prisoners were usually unloaded here so if they could walk we could! The Britons came with me but the film crew from Argentinian television could not manage it with their heavy equipment and some of the Poles thought it impossible that this could happen and so waited for something to happen. (It did not.) The snow had not been cleared away from the pavement [sidewalk] although the road was nice and black. We tried walking on the road but were ordered by one of the many police to get back onto the pavement. I felt really sorry for a Japanese gentleman who had what appeared to be a very heavy suitcase which he was attempting to drag. I suppose the left luggage had been closed for the day. I could not even get in the Stammlager because French President Jacques Chirac was visiting! If they were gassing him I would not have minded so much, but no-one was allowed in and now I hear he is back in France - alive. There was a large security presence at Auschwitz but the presence of a lot of coaches suggested that we were about to get in. One policeman spoke to me very politely in French and said how welcome I was. When he realised that I was not in the Chirac group he switched to Polish but remained polite. I suppose that a bit of rudeness on their part would only be human -- we were not the only ones kicked. Others had travelled from a long way such as Holland or Germany. I saw a friend who is an Orthodox Hassidic Jew and I tried to get in with him but his group was not allowed and then even former prisoners were not allowed in. One was wearing what appeared to be prison garb -- he should have been so lucky 62 years ago to get such treatment. Okay, I said, I know how to get to the gate but the authorities had foreseen my move and new fencing appeared to have been put up and we could not even see it. Soldiers and police were patrolling but no-one bothered us. After trying to circumnavigate the camp with the two Britons I met on the train we decided to go to Birkenau. At Birkenau proceedings were separated into VIP guests and riff raff, so that we riff raff could not speak to former inmates but there was a largish crowd there unlike ten years ago. We were forced to go to the main entrance and through security which understandably was not the low key affair it was in 1995. We stood around in the snow waiting for something to happen but it did not. I met a reporter from Germany and took her around on a tour and we were joined by a Danish student. We went to the existing blocks of the quarantine camp and I showed off my knowledge. I suggested a visit to gas chambers four and five not expecting to get there of course but walking was better than standing. No-one took me up, so I stayed with everyone else. We must have waited around two hours for something to happen in minus seven degrees. They started to burn some symbollic pyres and had some white smoke going up which I thought was in rather bad taste. (Apart from that it would have been black smoke it they had been burning bodies.) I hung around with the riff raff. I gave an interview to a lady from the BBC and spoke to an old Jewish gentleman speaking broken English. I tried both Polish and my broken Yiddish trying to find out where he was from but to no avail although I wrote a dedication in his scrap book which was quite an achievement given my numb fingers. At last the dignitaries must have been in place -- or was in just Russian President Putin who turned up late? Someone said that a couple of people had been stretchered off -- keeping people in their 80s hanging around like this did not strike me as being the way to treat them. So the former prisoners now found their real value -- to be paraded for the television cameras. First up to speak was Poland's culture minister Waldemar Dobrowski. He said the same thing in three languages. OK so everyone is not a linguist -- for those of us who are it was clearly going to be a hard day. Then came Simone Veil whose speech fortunately was not translated out of French [Website note: she figures on at least one list of dead victims of Auschwitz] and then a representative from the German Roma community. Good, so no-one wanted to show off their language abilities. Two girls from Krakow who had been on the train with me gave up before the speeches started. Others had also had enough. The organisation was awful and there was nothing to eat or drink -- in 1995 they had provided hot tea. Another way of covering some of the costs was lost. The real failure was with the absurd security measures. No traffic anywhere, Oswiêcim was dead. They also blocked the A4 motorway on the assumption that potential terrorists would not have road maps and not know how to get there. Good thinking, Batman! OK, I expected the archive could be closed but not the entire town and the environs, not to mention half of Krakow. Poland has really shot itself in the foot with this one. If this is how tourists are treated then they won't be coming back. And I do not expect Chirac, Putin, Berlusconi et al. left much money in this country. And they certainly did not have the good sense (if lack of political correctness) to sell the television rights to someone. The photos are on my website [www.pbn.com.pl].

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