Some Contemplations as a Jew Visiting Auschwitz

The night before I couldn’t sleep. Maybe it was the restlessness of my friend, but I am assuming we both were thinking about what was to come the next day. Auschwitz is a lot for anyone to comprehend but days before my trip I learned my family was from an hour north of Warsaw, and reality seemed even closer than ever before. It made thoughts of the holocaust hurt in new ways. More likely the ashes I would walk on once there, belong to someone who crossed paths with my ancestors. Lovers, friends, neighbors, all probable.

I thought about how if the Holocaust never happened, I probably wouldn’t exist along with thousands of other American Jews. My family would never have fled and my parents would never have crossed paths thousands of miles away in Chicago. It’s an unsettling thought that the world is what it is because the Holocaust did happen.

When it was finally time to get out of bed, I was almost happy I didn’t sleep. It felt right to be visiting such a place in a bad state so that I can better experience what those before me endured. When we got there it was snowing and under my two layers of pants and 3 shirts, gloves, hat, scarf, I was freezing. But if you were a prisoner in Auschwitz you had thin pajamas. This thought made my heart sink deeper.

Even if you took away the hunger, cold weather, and poor sleeping conditions, their experience would still have been hell. The lack of humanity in this place is almost unbearable. You can still feel it all around you, decades later. We saw the room full of shoes. It was only 5 days’ worth and my heart sunk even deeper.

The Nazis viewed Jews as units to use and dispose of. First robbing them of their possessions, then their loved ones, then their souls, and when nothing was left, they took their bodies. Heads were shaven and hair used as pillow stuffers or inserted into bombs to help with deadlier detonation. Gold teeth pulled from mouths and sold to fund the war.

There were prisoners whose job it was to tend to the gas chambers. To lie to their fellow prisoners that their death wasn’t imminent. I have to think, what did people do to deserve this? How did they not just lock themselves inside? Their fate of forcefully giving hope to the hopeless brings tears to my eyes. No one deserves this and I hope every prisoner whose soul was taken and body disposed of is at peace now. Sometimes I wonder, how could one believe in god after the holocaust. How could the world turn a blind eye? Are we turning blind eyes today?

I was looking at the wall of victims. The Nazis took pictures of the early prisoners and their photos lined the walls but these photos made it all the harder to comprehend their fates. For one, all the men looked like people I may know today. Friends, family neighbors. With their shaved heads it doesn’t look like an old picture, it looks new and familiar. Secondly, I realized, my picture wouldn’t have made this wall. I wouldn’t have lived long enough to be photographed, killed within hours of entering. I would be powerless, dead, and left to ashes, forced to be stuck on these grounds forever.

This thought kept circling my mind. 1.5 million people were killed at this place alone and walking around you can feel the death all around you. It feels as if their souls couldn’t escape these nightmares. I like to imagine a beautiful new town floating invisibly above. Where life is happy and their hardships weren’t for nothing. That these prisoners were rewarded for what they were put through.

The whole time I was there I was counting the minutes until I could leave. Those imprisoned never had that luxury. Of knowing they could leave. How did they find joy in a place like that? Did they find joy?

It is not easy to take all this in and understand. Honestly, I don’t think I allowed myself to fully understand- to fully comprehend their living conditions.

I sang the mourner’s kaddish, a prayer for the dead, but I wish there was more I could have done for these souls. Many days, weeks, months go by where the Holocaust doesn’t even cross my mind. I need to walk away from this experience and make positive changes from all this negative energy. For five full years this camp ran with no one stopping them, how is that possible? What have I been turning a blind eye to in my life? Do I stick up for others where I can?

From now on I know there is more I can do to help better this world.

I hope their souls are at rest and that somewhere in the universe, they are happy. I hope history is learned, that the past is never repeated. More importantly, while sad I walk out proud. Proud to be a Jew who can freely come and go from Auschwitz. They didn’t win so long as I am free.