I have struggled a bit with whether to include our trip to Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II - Birkenau in my blog. The reason is that it is such a sensitive subject, such a sad place to visit, and a difficult thing to talk about. As we were making plans to drive there the night before, Adam's whole family seemed sad by their own memories of having visited there or having heard about the trips of others who went there too. It seems that Symeon was taken there on a school field trip when he was fifteen as are many of the school children in Poland. It is a testament to the Polish people that they have not only preserved these sites of great horror, but also have invited the world to come, to remember, and to see.
And it is no easy thing to do. We arrived on a hot and sunny morning around 10 am and were assigned to an English-speaking group that would be led through the camp by a docent. Tour guides have to study for two years before they can be a docent at the camps, and their presentations are thoughtful and solemn and appropriate. They allot three hours for the tour in order to give visitors a chance to not only take in what is there, but to also read about it, meditate on it, and mourn over it too.
As we walked over the train tracks, the very ones that delivered countless thousands into the camps, I tried to imagine how it would have felt to disembark and be separated from my own husband and children as so many innocent familes had been years before. As we walked through the museum and the dormatories and the gas chambers and the surrounding area, it was hard to understand how the dignity of the prisoners could have been held in such contempt and even overlooked as they were systematically starved and gased and worked to death in the misguided pursuit of eugenics.
But there were signs of hope in the camp as well, in the spirit of Maximillian Kolbe, the Catholic priest who traded his life for a father's, in the people of Poland outside the fence who offered food and assistance however they could, in the hope that lived in the hearts of those who held out until they could be freed, and in the smooth and worn stairsteps throughout the tour standing as testament to the many many people from around the world who have come to see, to pray, to mourn, and to reflect. And to try to ensure that something like this never happens again.
And it is no easy thing to do. We arrived on a hot and sunny morning around 10 am and were assigned to an English-speaking group that would be led through the camp by a docent. Tour guides have to study for two years before they can be a docent at the camps, and their presentations are thoughtful and solemn and appropriate. They allot three hours for the tour in order to give visitors a chance to not only take in what is there, but to also read about it, meditate on it, and mourn over it too.
As we walked over the train tracks, the very ones that delivered countless thousands into the camps, I tried to imagine how it would have felt to disembark and be separated from my own husband and children as so many innocent familes had been years before. As we walked through the museum and the dormatories and the gas chambers and the surrounding area, it was hard to understand how the dignity of the prisoners could have been held in such contempt and even overlooked as they were systematically starved and gased and worked to death in the misguided pursuit of eugenics.
But there were signs of hope in the camp as well, in the spirit of Maximillian Kolbe, the Catholic priest who traded his life for a father's, in the people of Poland outside the fence who offered food and assistance however they could, in the hope that lived in the hearts of those who held out until they could be freed, and in the smooth and worn stairsteps throughout the tour standing as testament to the many many people from around the world who have come to see, to pray, to mourn, and to reflect. And to try to ensure that something like this never happens again.
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