Part of studying abroad is traveling to places you’ve only ever read about in history textbooks or tourist guides. Sometimes these are fantastic metropolises or gorgeous natural wonders, other times they are infamous sites known only for the tragic, world-changing events that occurred on their soil.
Auschwitz was the largest of the Nazi concentration camps, consisting of Auschwitz I (the base camp), Auschwitz II-Birkenau (the extermination camp), and Auschwitz III- Monowitz (a labor camp). Transport trains delivered Jews to the camp’s gas chambers from all over Nazi-occupied Europe.
Our bus pulled into the Auschwitz I compound last Friday at 7:45 am, during an unearthly foggy dawn in southern Poland. We students had the first guided tour of the day at 8 am, when the sun was just beginning to cast its faint light of early morning. As we walked on the stony ground, some of us still rubbing sleep from our eyes, the mist surrounding the twisting iron words of the famous entrance gate (Arbeit Macht Frei) lent an air of unfathomable surrealism to our journey.
We had a solemn, quiet tour where our guide spoke into a small microphone that transmitted to our individually coordinated headsets. Passing through the camp, the most recognizable and intimidating structures were the vigilant watch-towers guarding the lanes. Inside the buildings, known as numbered blocks, we saw heaps of discarded eyeglasses, piles of cast-off clothes, and mountains upon mountains of 80,000 abandoned shoes. We saw a small brick courtyard with a wall known only for the innumerable death squad executions that had taken place there. Blood-red roses had been dropped sorrowfully to the ground in tribute. Next, a hallway covered in photos of prisoners, both sexes in uniform with shaven heads. My eyes scanned the years of birth to determine the ages… 20, 24, 17. One could only tell when the photos switched from men to women because of the subtle reveal of softer features. And their eyes… their eyes were full of emotion, piercing the onlooker through both camera lens and time. We finished at a small crumbling building built into the side of a hill. Its dark and dank interior was appropriate for its former purpose, as a gas chamber.
Auschwitz II- Birkenau was about a 10-minute drive away. It was a vast wasteland of decrepit chimneys and low-slung, long brick houses dominating the landscape. As I walked up the long train tracks toward the emblematic entrance gate, I had to periodically stop and remind myself that I was walking in history. What struck me about these concentration and death camps was their immense continuity as far as the eye could see. Seemingly innumerable replicas of barracks retreated into the landscape in straight lines, underscoring the magnitude of the destruction they had organized. Later in one of these barracks, I encountered a group of young people with their heads bent somberly, each wrapped in an Israeli flag. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the emotion in their faces. How must it be to walk with pride, defiance, and memory, emblazoned with the symbol of your faith, in a place that for so long, so many years ago, ridiculed and hated it?
Wandering through the grassy corridors of Auschwitz-Birkenau, I couldn’t believe I was seeing one of the most reviled sites in the world. I believe it is important to see these places, for ourselves and more importantly, for humanity. I find it easy to believe that the camps are pilgrimage sites for many around the world. One can only feel a sense of helplessness as the weight of history thuds upon our consciousnesses. There is nothing you can do except listen and look. No tears you shed or roses you drop in tribute will change the facts of the past.
Afterwards on the bus ride to Krakow, my disoriented thoughts were punctuated by glimmers of insight. Recalling the dark, decaying gas chambers, my thoughts expanded into space and I struggled with the significance of this life, this pain that we inflict on each other. What denial, what instinct, real or imagined, what Thanatos death drive was here that we witnessed today? History is irreversible, but with lessons learned from the past is it irredeemable? “How apropos”, I thought briefly, when my iPod tuned to a wailing Ziggy Marley. Maybe one day, regardless of creed or color, we’ll all be able to say, ‘Love is my religion.’
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Rochester chapter.