Cyprus, at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa

A small island ( the third of the Mediterranean after Sicily and Sardinia) is a former British colony which gained its independence in 1960. The aristocracy of the settlements, inhabitans and way of living bears the mark of the British.  Still, the people are either Greek  ( four fifths of them) or Turkish.

The tall mountains, the valleys, the glittering beaches offer superb views. Almost 326 days per year are sunshiny days.

The vegetation of the island include plants of olives, carobs and citrus trees.

The  fragrant forests abound in  pines, dwarf oaks, cypresses, cedars, lowlands pines ,acacias and eucalyptus.

The Cypriot cusine is of Mediterranean flavour. They eat lean meat dishes, pulses, cheese and freshly grown fruits. Oil olive and the local herbs are a distinctive flavour to these dishes. The local dishes include halloumi( a mix of sheep and goat milk),taramosalata( salted roe of cod or carp).

Semenic, a flower and a mountain

Semenic Mountain ( 1447 m Piatra Goznei Peak)   is a ski resort in the Semenic-Cheile Carașului National Park, in  Banat region . Its name represents the name of a rare flower that grows in the wilderness.  Besides the attractive sights that appear in front of your eyes, there are not many things to be done here. The destroyed hotels and buildings, that once accommodated hundreds of people, seem to be the setting of a horror movie.

There are some skking camps organised here during winter, when Semenic becomes a merry and lively place. A small church from the 19th century ( Sf. Ilie) stands  tall in front of us.

 

 

 

45 km from  Resita, the mountain has got skiing slopes of medium  difficulty as well as slopes for beginners.

 

The layer of snow is thick and is available, sometimes, even 6 months per year. During winer, the temperatures are between – 25  and 6 degrees Celsius and during summer the average temperature goes around 10 and 25 degrees.

Auschwitz, the scream of death

The Auschwitz camp complex was set up in 1940 in what is now south-central Poland. Large numbers of Jews were deported there between 1942 and 1944. The main camp was known as Auschwitz I. Birkenau, or Auschwitz II, was supposedly the main extermination center,  while Monowitz, or Auschwitz III, was a large industrial site where gasoline was produced from coal. 

Auschwitz initially served as a detention center for political prisoners. However, it evolved into a network of camps where Jewish people  were exterminated, often in gas chambers, or used as slave labor. Some prisoners were also subjected to barbaric medical experiments led by Josef Mengele. Mengele, who came to be known as the “Angel of Death,” performed a range of experiments on detainees. For example, in an effort to study eye color, he injected serum into the eyeballs of dozens of children, causing them excruciating pain. He also injected chloroform into the hearts of twins, to determine if both siblings would die at the same time and in the same manner. During World War II (1939-45), more than 1 million people, by some accounts, lost their lives at Auschwitz.

In January 1945, with the Soviet army approaching, Nazi officials ordered the camp abandoned and sent an estimated 60,000 prisoners on a forced march to other locations.

 

 

The main camp of Auschwitz was like a small town, with its own staff canteen, cinema, theatre and grocery store.

 

 

Besides Jews, others deported to Auschwitz included 150,000 Poles, 23,000 Romani and Sinti, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war and 400 Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Witold Pilecki, a Polish soldier, volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz in order to gather information, escape and let the world know about the Holocaust.

 

Its first commandant was Rudolf Höss , who previously had helped run the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany.

Auschwitz originally was conceived as a concentration camp, to be used as a detention center for the many Polish citizens arrested after Germany annexed the country in 1939.

 

These detainees included anti-Nazi activists, politicians, resistance members and luminaries from the cultural and scientific communities.  Once Hitler’s Final Solution became official Nazi policy, however, Auschwitz was deemed an ideal death camp locale. For one thing, it was situated near the center of all German-occupied countries on the European continent. For another, it was in close proximity to the string of rail lines used to transport detainees to the network of Nazi camps.

However, not all those arriving at Auschwitz were immediately exterminated. Those deemed fit to work were employed as slave labor in the production of munitions, synthetic rubber and other products considered essential to Germany’s efforts in World War II.

 

Of a total of about 7,000 staff at Auschwitz, only 750 were ever punished. More than 7,000 Nazi personnel are thought to have served at Auschwitz but just a few hundred have been prosecuted for the crimes committed there. The pursuit of justice has not ceased, with German justice officials saying on 2013 that there were 30 surviving Auschwitz officials who should face prosecution.

When the Soviet army entered Auschwitz on January 27, they found approximately 7,600 sick or emaciated detainees who had been left behind. The liberators also discovered mounds of corpses, hundreds of thousands of pieces of clothing and pairs of shoes and seven tons of human hair that had been shaved from detainees before their liquidation. According to some estimates, between 1.1 million to 1.5 million people, the vast majority of them Jews, died at Auschwitz during its years of operation.