Zuzanna organized a private tour of Auschwitz for us and picked us up at 7am to drive us there. Along the way, she explained the history of Poland leading up to WWII and provided the historical context of the Nazi invasion and occupation. She also prepared us for what we were about to see which helped us get the most out of our tour.
Afterwards she took us to a local restaurant that is only frequented by locals (no English menus!) before taking us to a town that had had a substantial Jewish population before the war but today has none. The local synagogue still stands and has an exhibit of some of the personal stories of people who had lived there and what happened to them. We were the only ones at the temple so we were able to reflect on these stories in quiet solitude away from the crowds of other tourists. The stop in that town put into human context the unimaginable statistics and sheer scale of Auschwitz. We didn’t realize it ahead of time, but that was absolutely a critical piece of comprehending the utter devastation of the Holocaust. Zuzanna was an excellent guide for us.