My Trip to Auschwitz Concentration Camp in 1974 Part I--the Journey by rail and ship

Photo of Children at Auschwitz

With the rise of overt anti-semitism and white nationalism in the world and the recent report that most young Europeans have not heard of the Holocaust and cannot name a single concentration camp, I am more grateful than I have been before for my trip to Auschwitz Concentration Camp 40+ years ago.

It was January of 1974, Richard M. Nixon was still president of the U.S., I was in the middle of 8th grade at Theodore Roosevelt Jr. High School which shares a fence with the San Diego Zoo.  Our father, Prescott "Nick" Nichols, a leftwing activist and professor of comparative literature at San Diego State University, had earned his "sabbatical" and wanted to spend it studying in Paris.

the Stefan Batory

 To get to Paris in 1974 with a tempera-mentally pessimistic wife, as well as a 13 year old, 10 year old, a 6 year old and six months worth of luggage (without wheels mind you) in tow, our father picked the following logical route to Paris:

• 2 days by Amtrak from San Diego, CA to Vancouver, British Colombia
• 3 days by Canadian Pacific Railway from Vancouver, BC to Montreal, Quebec 
• 10 days aboard the Polish luxury ocean liner called the Stefan Batory from Montreal, Canada to Gdynia, Poland (via England, Holland and Denmark)
• Then traveling by rail (almost said "horseback") through Poland and then Czechoslovakia to Paris, France

On the way to Auschwitz, I got to experience

• a massive strike of the pullman car servers on the Canadian rail, leaving us responsible for our own food, water and toilet paper on a 3 day trip across the continent sleeping only sitting up on our seats
• feeling sick and staying confined to my stateroom aboard the Stefan Batory every single day of the sea voyage--missing amazing looking food in the gorgeous dining room.
• Going through puberty on the trip as well as not eating so that I started the trip a plump little girl and ended it a tall thin young woman
• Returning from an overly long day trip in Rotterdam to see the Stefan Batory sail off with all our belongings and passports onboard, and, sadly, without us.  
• Causing us to take a taxi 20 miles up a river to a barge where we joined the Stefan Batory in progress steaming along at many knots and had to climb a very tall ladder in the rain as it swayed back and forth on a moving ship.
• I will never forget the look on my mother's face as she watched her 6 year old, Evan, being hauled up the side of the ship.

None of this, though, really prepared us for the experience of traveling "behind the Iron Curtain" in the then Soviet block in 1974 to Auschwitz, which as not yet a museum and had exactly NO infrastructure for tourists.

I'll tell about the actual trip to Auschwitz in my next post...