Finding God and Hope in Auschwitz 1 (by Krissy Bucchi)

I knew that waking up this morning in Poland wasn’t going to be easy, not because I didn’t get to bed till 3am and wake up 4.5 hours later for breakfast, but because today was what I’ve waited for since 8^th grade. Today, I was going to Auschwitz.

It began with three words above my head, “Arbeit Macht Frei.” What does this mean? “Work Will Set You Free.” Wow. I closed my eyes as they filled with water to release the tears and watched them drop to the muddy ground while I entered the camp.

Today I learned the story and walked in the footsteps of 1.3 million prisoners. 1.1 million were Jews, and 90% of those Jews’ lives ended here in Auschwitz. So where was God in all of this madness? Where was the hope? I’ll tell you.

Her name was Anna, our Polish tour guide today; she made seeing God and feeling hope possible in various ways throughout the camp. She stood approximately 5’10” in a black jacket with glasses on her pale face, green eyes, an umbrella in hand and love in her heart.

She gave us a brief introduction as we passed by the first few buildings, but the one that read, “27 Block,” on the right hand side of the door is where we entered. As we walked through the first few rooms, one in particular was dark with images on the wall. They were different families, “Neumann Family, Carlebach Family, Gehta Family, Schechner Family...” and the names went on. Videos played on the other wall of these families laughing, praying, singing, playing games, the usual ‘good ‘ole times’ as some say.

Another room upstairs had a series of eight televisions lined up side by side horizontally on the wall that read different titles and showed various black and white pictures. One title that stood out to me the most said, “Method of Murder: Starvation & Epidemic Diseases.” One by one the images appeared on the screen starting from left to right, and only got harder to see as the next showed up on the television. Naked, skinny, on the ground, dirty, and lifeless. But there was God and hope in all of this right? Most shake their heads in disbelief.

Next were the children drawings. They were lightly etched on the white painted walls with lead and a select few chose colored pencils. Some children drew themselves playing jump rope in a park, walking their dog, being with their families, and then there were others that drew Nazis shooting guns, railway tracks, or prisoners hanging from ropes. I’d ask you to close your eyes, but then you couldn’t continue reading, so instead I’ll simply ask you to take a moment and picture yourself as a child. More specifically, a child living within the electrical barbwire fences that surrounded the Auschwitz concentration camp. Could you imagine living as a child prisoner? Most would say no, but think about what images would remain in their young heads, this room was a product of those images.

As we walked through each building, which have now been transformed into individual museums, we saw ashes of burned bodies, fake death certificates, pictures of women and children exiting the train, sculptures of the designed gas chambers, Zyklon B blue gas pallets, and informational pictures with numbers and statistics of the camp.

The few blocks afterwards allowed a heavy weight to be placed on my chest. I saw the personal belongings of the prisoners behind preserved glass. First was all the hair shaved from the men and women, there was just so much of it. Blonde, brown, grey, curly, straight, braided, it was all there right in front of me. I found myself grabbing my own hair to check if it was all there. Glasses, shoes, prosthetic legs and arms, brushes, dishes, baskets, everything that made these individuals feel human was taken from them all at once. And God was still there, hope was still alive, right? Maybe.

Needless to say, it didn’t get easier as the end of touring the camp got near. I saw the living situations of the prisoners; the toilettes, the barracks where they slept, the washrooms, the undressing rooms, and finally the gas chamber with the crematorium located in the basement.

As I have now reached well over the 500 minimum word requirement for the blog assignment, I will finally tell you where God and Hope was throughout my day in Auschwitz 1. It’s rather simple actually, sorry to disappoint the suspense you might have been building while reading.

My father recently shared some inspiring words with me, “I am choosing to look forward from now on, and I’m not looking back. I will look through the bad and see the good that awaits ahead of me.” So that brings me back to those three words, “Arbeit Macht Frei.” If you look at the picture of the sign that I have posted, you will see gaps or spaces through the letters on the sign. Think of the words as the bad times, and the gaps as the good. I saw God from the beginning, the sign holds negative value but it also holds so much hope.

Our day started off with rain, but finished with sunshine, an act of God? I’d say. But it was more than that, it was the way the sun shines against the bricks of the buildings, and nothing more. God shining His light, His warmth on the camp provides hope, and I felt that.

By no means is it easy to find God and Hope in Auschwitz, it is a challenge and pulls at every heartstring that exists. It was an honor to walk the camp of Auschwitz 1 today, and as I left I whispered to the angels in the air, “God is good all the time, all the time God is good.”