Kate Ann Gonta: Birkenau

Today we went to Auschwitz II, otherwise known as Birkenau. Birkenau is equivalent to 200 soccer fields and is full of ruins; ruins of the gas chambers and barracks. We started our tour by beginning at a cattle car on the railroad tracks. The cattle cars were used to transport thousands of Jews to their death. From the cattle car, we walked the same path that those prisoners walked many years ago to the main gate. I was already starting to get nervous. Upon entering the main gate, it was so surreal. I was physically standing in a place that I have only seen in movies and read about in books. Looking over the land of Birkenau, it was completely empty but full at the same time. There was not that many people there, however so much terror happened here, that I could feel it in the air. "The absence of presence and the presence of absence," kept running through my mind. Being here also made me think of the poem by Elie Wiesel, "Lift your Eyes and Look at the Sky." A couple of stanzas stuck out in my mind when I was walking through Birkenau. He wrote "Look, and look around you, and you wonder how could entire communities, multitudes of human beings-men, woman and children, all descendants of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob- have been brought here in sealed, stifling cattle cars, from all the corners of occupied Europe, to suffer and to vanish in such a small place, ten thousands during one long night?" As I stood and walked the grounds of Birkenau, I couldn't and still can't wrap my head around how destructive the Nazis were to the Jews. The Jews literally unloaded from the cattle cars and waited in the forest for their turn to die in the gas chambers. Millions of them gone in 15-20 minutes. Birkenau is said to be known as the biggest cemetery in the world, and now I can understand why. Not only were people killed in the gas chambers but they were also burnt to death on the grounds right next to the chambers. There are still ashes that remain on the ground, in the ponds and on the trees even after all these years. Another stanza that stood out to me was " Close your eyes and listen, just listen: somehow the prayers of the old and the laments of the young, as they are walking to their death, are still hovering in the air, waiting to be received by the celestial tribunal. Can you imagine what went on inside? No, do not even try. Mothers holding their children, fathers whispering to them not to cry." There were many moments that we were silent during our tour and I could feel the air was filled with ora. It made me feel very unsettling. At one point, we went into a barrack that housed woman and children. All I could think about while walking around were mothers holding their children in the freezing cold. No mother or child should ever have to experience what they went through. The fact that Birkenau was imagined, conceived and constructed by man is so scary to me. To think that a human beings can do this other human beings is beyond my perception and even though the crimes that went on here are unimaginable, the fact that the prisoners held their faith and had hope is so inspiring to me. We must always remember to keep strong in our faith during a difficult time and to keep hope in our hearts for the sake of our humanity.