Today, Friday, March 10th, 2017 is a day already filled with many mixed emotions. As I am writing this, I am on a flight from New York to Poland. I am eager to witness and learn first-hand where the Holocaust had taken place, but I am anxious. I am anxious because I do not really know what to expect. Sure, I have heard about the Holocaust throughout my years in school, but that is simply information coming straight out of a textbook. Stepping foot in Auschwitz, or any concentration camp, is not something that any person can prepare for. Walking on the same ground, and being in the presence of where millions of Jews had been brutally tortured and murdered is not something that can be taught out of a textbook and expected to be fully understood. I am in belief that you do not truly understand anything until you experience or witness it, and in this case, that is stepping foot on the concentration camp and using our senses to get a better understanding of those dark times. While I am anxious about this trip, I am also intrigued. I have many questions, some of which I would have never asked if I wasn’t traveling to where it had all happened. I am not sure if all of my questions can be answered, but I feel as if the Holocaust left many unanswered questions. One of the questions that has constantly been in the back of my head since the start of this course was why the Jews. I have heard so much about the Holocaust up to this point in my life, but I have never truly understood why the Jewish people were targeted. Throughout the course of this experience, we have been constantly reminded of the teaching of contempt. At first, the teaching of contempt had made perfect sense to me, but throughout the course, it had only raised more questions. In early Christiaan literature, there were many anti-Jewish impressions such as the Jews being responsible for crucifying Jesus, which makes them responsible for the deicide. Other anti-Jewish impressions that I found interesting are that Jews rejected Jesus after he tried to preach to them, and the tribulations of the Jews was God’s punishment to them for killing Jesus. The idea was that the Jews were stubborn, faithless to God, and were an obstacle to everyone else around them. If something was wrong, it seemed that the Jews were the go-to to blame. In Poland, and while on the grounds of the concentration camps, I hope to get a better understanding of the questions that I still have. I hope that I can have a better understanding of these questions, so that I can have a better understanding of this tragedy. I don’t know what to expect while I am in the presence of where this all happened, but I feel as if that is a good thing. I am going into this experience with questions, and no expectations. I am excited for this experience, and it begins now.
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