Visit to Auschwitz

For quite a while now, I have been oddly intrigued by the Holocaust.  I can’t really explain why.  It probably all began when I read The Diary of Anne Frank during a vacation and spent an hour crying on the balcony of my hotel when I got to the end.  Since then, I’ve studied that period of history quite a bit during my time as a student of International Relations & European Studies at college, and I’ve read lots more on the subject, but I still just can’t wrap my brain around how something so terrible could have been allowed to happen.  Anyway, after studying the subject so much, I felt that it would be important to see the place that is attached to this tragic period of history.

So, despite the fact that it is something I’ve wanted to do for a while, I was really nervous about going to Auschwitz during my time in Krakow.  Like butterflies-in-my-stomach, slightly nauseous nervous.  Fortunately, I ended up having some moral support, as a couple of guys from my hostel decided they wanted to catch the same bus as me.  Conversation with them offered a nice distraction during the hour-long journey to Oswiecim, the town where Auschwitz is located.  I was on my own for the tour, though, since they went with a Spanish guide.  But maybe this was for the best, as it made the tour a more personal and reflective experience.  

Walking through Auschwitz, I think my brain wanted to avoid fully processing what had happened there.  It was just too terrible to comprehend.  There were moments, however, when I was overcome by the reality of the atrocities that occurred.  One thing that really got to me was a display case of clothing of children who had been at the camp.  It was heartbreaking to see those tiny hand-knit sweaters, probably made by some loving mother or grandmother, as a representation of a child that was torn away from his family, never to have a chance at a full, happy life.  I was also disturbed by a gigantic pile of shoes, each pair having once belonged to a person taken to the camp.  Strangely, it wasn’t the magnitude of the pile that got to me as much as the individual pairs of shoes and the personalities they represented.  A pair of colorful espadrille sandals that poked out of the heap, for example, brought to mind a lively young woman with a love for summertime and vacations.  A pair of well-worn oxfords conjured up the image of an ambitious, hard-working man doing his best to support his family in difficult times.  Still, one of the most difficult parts of being at Auschwitz was walking through a former barrack lined with hundreds of photos of the camp’s prisoners.  As I studied these haunting pictures, I was struck with the fleeting image of the faces of my own loved ones as the faces in the photos.  This thought forced a direct and profound connection between the people who are so dear to me, so real and important in my life, and those who were imprisoned at Auschwitz. 

I think it can be fairly easy to not fully grasp the realness of something so terrible as the Holocaust because the people involved don’t seem fully real.  We are separated from them by time, geographical distance, and perhaps religious beliefs.  But seeing a child’s lovingly-made sweater, seeing a pair of sandals that could easily belong to your sister or your best friend, seeing sorrowful eyes stare back at you from a photo …these are the things that make these people real.  You are forced to recognize that these people had once been living and breathing, laughing and worrying, celebrating and working, loving and dreaming, just like us.

So that brings me to the lesson that I took away from the difficult visit to Auschwitz—that we must not forget our fundamental connection to every other human being in this world.  This can be difficult…we live in our own little bubbles, passing each day consumed by our own troubles & triumphs.  We often forget to be mindful of what is happening to the people we have never met in a country we have never been to.  But after visiting Auschwitz, I’m reminded of how important it is to avoid this lack of consciousness.  We live in a time in which, sadly, genocides still occur, and people are still persecuted for simply being who they are.  I have hope that this won’t always be a reality.  But if that is to be the case, it is vital for us to remember that the person we’ve never met, in the country we’ve never been to, is just as human as our mother, father, sibling, or best friend.  He may be different in terms of nationality, language, or religion.  He may be unknown to us, but what is important is that he feels and thinks things are known to this, and for this reason, we should care.