Eight years ago I visited Auschwitz concentration camp in Oswiecim Poland. The notorious nazi death camp is only an hour and a half drive from Krakow where John Paul II was archbishop before becoming Pope. In 1979 he called this camp “The Golgotha of our times.”
No words adequately describe the desolation I experienced the afternoon I visited this horrific place. Before going I had seen photographs of the infamous gate with “ Arbeit macht frei – Work sets you free” above the entrance. I was surprised that the camp consisted of several buildings.
But what surprised me the most was the barracks where some male prisoners were housed, who were working there before they died either from malnutrition, pneumonia, or dysentery due to the cold and inadequate conditions.