Day Eight • Czestochowa • Auschwitz

We began our day at one of the most popular shrines in Poland. We celebrated Mass at the shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa.

After lunch we went to the former Nazi Concentration Camp in Auschwitz.

We concluded the day with evening prayer at a convent.

  
                 
  Read more about it here. The "black madonna" of Czestochowa            
             
       
             
                          Shirley receiving a blessing on her birthday.    
        The altar where we celebrated Mass                
                                                   
The memorial to St. Maxamilian Kolbe                                              
The Visit to Auschwitz Concentration Camp
 

The weather was almost too nice for Auschwitz -- that place of inhumanity and evil was bathed in too much sunlight for my sensibility. Yet it IS Easter, a time when we look for new life despite the crucifixions of humanity. Still, the color fades when we remember the horror of the Nazi concentration camps.

It was good that we ended the day in the Carmelite Convent with prayer.

  
   
   
Three people to a bed per level.  
 
   
The gas chamber and crematorium
     
         
             
                                                           
     
    The ovens.
     
 
               
   
   
       
    Candle left by Pope John
Paul II in the cell where Maximilian Kolbe died.		                
               

Two prisoners of Auschwitz were canonized as saints:

Read about:

St. Maximilian Kolbe
St. Edith Stein
          As the sun set, we entered the Carmelite convent for a moment of prayer.
                     
                                                                 
        On to DAY NINE