We’ve all grown up learning about the Holocaust in school, probably talking about it on a surface level for a couple weeks in Social Studies each year, or maybe reading Hana’s Suitcase by Karen Levine or The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. Some of us may have even delved deeper as we’ve gotten older by taking specific courses on the subject. No matter your level of familiarity with this awful time in history, I believe it’s extremely important for everyone to visit a concentration camp at some point.
I have now been to four different concentration camps in my life. Dachau in Germany, Mauthausen in Austria and Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek in Poland. Each time I am more and more floored by how cruel the Nazi’s were and what humankind is actually capable of when we teach hate. You see and learn things at these camps that completely horrify you and are sometimes impossible to imagine—things that you probably never discussed in a classroom setting.
I’ve seen and learned about some really impactful things during my visits to these concentration camps. I’ve seen thousands and thousands of pairs of shoes that were taken from people entering the camps. Additionally, huge piles of eyeglasses, ceramics, luggage and other possessions that were also confiscated. At Auschwitz they showcase a disgustingly massive amount of hair that was shaved off of prisoners heads. There’s so much that it spans the entire wall of the exhibit. Some of it is long, some is curly and even some of it is still in braids. I’ve also seen multiple different types of “beds” within the barracks, which are mere slabs of wood that held around 6 people at a time at certain points of the Holocaust.
Throughout my visits to these camp I’ve also learned a lot about the head officers of each camp and the terrible things they did to prisoners. At Dachau, one of the head officers would force prisoners to walk after running over their legs with his car. At Majdanek, the head officer would tie people to the back of his motorcycle and speed through the camp. Another officer would shoot at prisoners like a game as they ran around in circles trying to avoid the gunshot. At Mauthausen, officers would trip and push the prisoners as they carried heavy boulders on their backs and proceed to shoot them if they didn’t get back up right away. I’ve seen torture rooms where prisoners would be isolated, hanged or even have their limbs pulled off. I’ve seen medical examination rooms where doctors of the Nazi party would perform experiments on prisoners despite the immense pain or cruelty. I’ve seen mass graves that held hundreds of people who were buried without headstones or markings. Some of these camps still have standing gas chambers, which are rooms people were pushed into and suffocated in by the release of Zyklon-B gas. You can actually see the scratches on the walls as people dropped to their death, gasping for their last breath of pure oxygen that was no longer available. At concentration camps you’ll probably also see the crematoriums, or ovens, where dead bodies were taken and shoved into sometimes three to four at a time and burned until they were no longer flesh and bones, just ashes. At Majdanek, there was a bathtub next to the ovens so the Nazis patrolling the camp’s bath water wouldn’t be cold. There was also an enormous mountain of human ashes that have been kept under a dome so they didn’t blow away after all these years. A mountain that honestly looks like dirt, but actually used to be human life.
These things are just some of the incredibly impactful things you might see or hear about while visiting a concentration camp. You’ll learn how these prisoners spent their days under Nazi abuse, from the strict dress and behavior rules, to the poor food rations, to the daily labor, to the general lack of humanity within the fences. Maybe you have zero interest in seeing these horrific things, but honestly, do you think anyone actually enjoys it? We go because it’s important.
There’s a common phrase people use when referring to the Holocaust, which is “Never Forget.” We will never forget the ~12 million people who were murdered just over 70 years ago. Well, the whole point of going to these camps is not to just “Never Forget,” but rather to try and actually relive and grasp these horrendous experiences. I’ve walked around many camps bundled up but still chilled to my core, my feet hurting and my mind overstimulated and exhausted, but I am only getting a miniscule insight into how the victims of the Holocaust actually lived. Thankfully, most of us will never truly be able to understand what these prisoners went through, like starvation, murdered loved ones, intense physical labor and exploitation. However, going to concentration camps makes the stories of these prisoners much more real and sparks a hatred of hate within a person that makes it so these people’s deaths are not in vain.
I think one of the biggest realizations a person has when visiting a concentration camp is that their life really is not hard. Yeah, there are things in life that are stressful and might make you feel horrible, but how big of a deal are those things compared to this? Going to a concentration camp is one of the few experiences that will truly make you grateful for each and every day, every opportunity and even every stressor and obstacle that comes your way. You get to walk out of a camp unlike the millions of people who never got that chance.
You might not be Jewish, or a Gypsy, or homosexual, or disabled, or a communist, or affiliate with any other targeted group of non-Aryans, but that doesn’t matter because I’m willing to bet that you probably know somebody that is tied to one of these groups. And even if you don’t, you shouldn’t need to be personally connected to such a tragedy to feel and understand its importance. I often have friends that come up to me and say things like “I know this is weird, but I really want to visit a concentration camp,” or, “This is so bad but I find Holocaust sites so interesting.” I always tell them that no, it’s not weird and that it’s not bad. It’s amazing and important that you care, because that’s the only way history won’t repeat itself, even moreso today than ever before because the next generation of people will never have the opportunity to meet and hear a Holocaust survivor speak in person like many of our generation have been able to.
Everyone should visit a concentration camp at some point in their life because it’s impossible to not become more empathetic towards other people afterwards. I go to these camps and I’m inspired to be better, to stand up for the oppressed and to try and do my part, no matter how small it may seem, to make sure a group of people is never marginalized in my society. This is an impossible task for one person, but I truly believe that if more people were exposed to the atrocities of the Holocaust first-hand, there would be more empathy and love in this world and thus, a better one.