Working at the Salt Mine

Cracow's been around for a while.

Salt was super valuable a long time ago, and even before the spice
trade (remember that?). Food tasted bad back in the day, water was
dirty, and people were stinky.

Salt is sal in Spanish. Sal can become salorio for a person who works
with salt, or is a miner of salt (not an exact translation) Lots of
Poles worked in this mine, which was found by drilling into a salty
pool on the surface. Suddenly, Polish food was the best in the world
(not really). But, the king in the area took full advantage of this,
and made tons of money, and influence by doling out this salt to
miners and controlling the sale of salt.

The 2 kilo stipend that he allowed the miners to take from the mine
(in addition to his wage) was called his salorio also. From this we
get the word Salary.

Cool, eh?

We went a couple of hundred meters into the earth, through a huge
ballroom (see the pictures) and tons of passages.

No slaves worked this mine. No prisoners worked this mine. Miners here
were happy and rich. The Poles are proud of this, rightfully.

Amazingly, I got an email from Patrick McDonough of Braintree, MA
telling about how he also has hit this mine (back in 2006). You are
right Pat, it was super cool.

It was 14 degrees down there. Nice and cool and we were sad to get
back up to the surface and the hot weather up there.

Oh, and a side comment. There are wasps in Central Europe, and they
are all over the food everywhere. They don't look like the cute little
honey bees. They look like yellow jackets or wasps. They are annoying,
and I wish they would buzz off.

Nazi Death Camps - Never Forget

Tours like this are so overwhelming that they almost don't make an
impression.

Nazi's killed lots of people? Sure they did.

They split families up, and sent most of the people off the trains
straight to the Death Showers, and the ovens'? Yeah, I knew that.

They applied German Engineering to the problems of how to kill as many
sick or weak, or Jewish, or gay, or Jehovah's witnesses, or gypsies
(or Roma, or Gitanos), or Soviets, or prisoners of war in the least
amount of time, at the cheapest cost? Sure they did, and they were
very efficient.

They mashed 80-100 people in cattle cars for 3-4 days to ship them all
the away across the continent, in order to steal anything they have
left, strip them naked, shave them bald and then asphyxiate and burn
them? Yep and yep.

They lured some of the murdered on board after selling them their
tickets and promising that they were just being relocated to farms and
other towns in the east? Sure, a bunch of times.

They quickly outgrew their first location (a Polish army camp), and
built another one a few k away, to hold 10x the people. Yep, they did.
Don't forget the third one they built, or the expansion program they
had at the second one.

Being German, they kept incredibly detailed records of people
admitted, took pictures and personal details, and then worked their
prisoners to death. Yep. Thanks for that, now we the victorious have
infinite records to use to remember what you did.

That they only entered people who made the first cut (intended), which
would be the strong, and just obliterated anyone else. Right. If you
went left from the train, you were insta-dead, and all your stuff
would be sent back to the Volk in Germany.

Experiments on men, women and children? Course, they are Nazi's.

Research into twins, so that they could alter German women to give
birth to more twins, which would be good for Germany.

Research into castration and barrenness, so that you could spay and
neuter those that might be infecting those that deserved to live.

Open pit burning of corpses, when your ovens just weren't big enough,
the supply was too high, or one of your oven's was in the shop. Yes

Shaving of heads for the express purpose of turning it into clothe
that could be used in garments or as stuffing or ticking for pillows.
Yes. These products were highly sought after for their high quality.

Express built warehouses to hold all the loot, much of which was
melted down (like their previous owners) and sent to help the Reich.
Yes, and once the allies (in this case, the Soviets) showed up, there
were bags of hair 80 kilo's each stacked to the ceiling, with a total
weight of about a ton. Never mind all the shoes, luggage, pairs of
glasses, cups and glasses, dolls, prosthetic legs, crutches, prayer
shawls, gold teeth and belts.

See what I mean? Hardly even makes a dent.