iIA Life-Changing Trip to Auschwitz
t has been about twenty four hours since we walked through the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and I am still searching for some sort of understanding, some adjective, some way to wrap my head around what I saw, what I heard, and what I know happened in that place. I spent the morning drive to the town of Auschwitz with my stomach in knots, not knowing how to prepare myself for what I was about to see. The first thing I noticed while walking through the gate was shocking: it looked pretty. The brick buildings lined up in an orderly pattern seemed quaint, the bare trees casting patterns on the ground seemed ornate, and the snow blanketing the entire scene seemed undisturbed and peaceful. And that is when I fully realized the true essence of the Holocaust: the utterly disturbing perversion of such a beautiful place in order to perform unthinkable actions on a beautiful people. The thought of the horrifically obvious contrast between the beautiful and the horrendous remained with me throughout the tour. The tour itself was one of the hardest things I have ever done. There were some experiences, like observing the impossible size of salvaged baby clothes, staring into the eyes of emaciated prisoners, and especially seeing piles upon piles of human hair that looked so frighteningly like my own, that truly made me feel as though I would not be able to finish the tour. The emotion I felt when we approached the gas chamber, though, was nothing other than fear. After seeing all that I had seen already, torture chambers, punishment rooms, the “Wall of Death,” I did not feel that I would be able to enter the place where the most horrific of all of the Nazi actions occurred. I found myself living the experience of the prisoners in my mind. When Eva said, “Here the prisoners were lined up,” I saw projections of people from my mind in a line, holding their children, shivering in clothes far less warm than my own, and comforting one another that it would all be better soon. When Eva said, “Here they were told to undress in order to take a shower,” I watched as these people reassured each other that they would take a shower and then return to the barracks as they undressed. But when Eva said, “And here is where they were brought in, locked in, and gassed with Cyclone B,” I had to shut off my mind. I could not bear to see that happening, even in my mind. That was when I was able to see, though, that although my mind was an enemy that could be easily stopped, the true enemy was unstoppable to the helpless people that had stood in that very room for the last time. The experience was completely overwhelming, and none of the images have left my mind for a second since we left. The image that keeps reappearing though, is an image of hope. It is the image from the memorial at Birkenau that says, “For ever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity where the Nazis murdered about one and a half million men, women, and children, mainly Jews, from various countries of Europe.” That trip changed me, it devastated me, it disturbed me, but it gave me hope for the future of humanity, and it inspired me to never forget.
