Guilty Of Ignorance

As I am writing this on May 1^st, 2017, it has been seven weeks since our journey from New York to Poland. Although I am finally settled back to life at Iona College, overloaded with work as finals are quickly approaching and surrounded by my friends in a residence hall that has become a place that I can call home, I am still constantly reminded of my journey to Poland. I knew that going to Poland would be a rare experience that I would treasure forever, but I did not know how many things in the United States would remind me about what had happened during these devastating times. For the past year, U.S. President Donald Trump has been compared to Adolf Hitler, but I have never focused or understood why people had this opinion. I thought it was nonsense and people simply being upset because they did not like this political figure, but after my journey to Poland, I understand peoples concern. Following my return from Poland, I saw an article about the early warning signs of fascism so I clicked it. The article was directed at Donald Trump, and his similarities towards Adolf Hitler. Some of these warning signs included a distain for human rights, rampant sexism, controlled mass media, obsession with national security, and fraudulent elections. While Donald Trump and the RNC deny this, there have been many allegations towards Donald Trump that go along with these warning signs. A few weeks back, White House press secretary Sean Spicer while talking about the danger of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad argued in a press conference that Hitler had not used chemical weapons for World War II. These examples of Sean Spicer and Donald Trump comparisons to Adolf Hitler make me realize that people are ignorant and ill-informed when it comes to World War II and the Holocaust.

I would have never guessed that my journey to Poland would affect my life so much and so deeply. I learned that this trip was not simply to learn the material, but to witness and reflect. I have many pages of notes, but it is not the notes that will stay in my head and my heart; it is the images and sounds of the Holocaust that will stay with me forever. Following my journey, I did not think that I would constantly be putting thought into what had happened. I consider many things that I would have never even thought of before witnessing the grounds of the Holocaust. I still have many unanswered questions, and I know that I will always have unanswered questions, but I know that I will always look at every question with multiple perspectives. Poland changed my life, and I have a whole new understanding of the Holocaust, but I know that there is still so many things to learn and witness. As I end this blog, I will finish the same way I started, constantly pondering about the Holocaust, Hitler, Nazis, Jews and Poland, but I am okay with pondering now, because that is what this journey was for.

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Work Doesn't Set You Free

As I am writing this, it is still surreal to me that I am in Poland, let alone in Oswiecim, where Auschwitz 1 is located. We have all gotten used to our living arrangements and being in a foreign country, but some of us, like myself, are still not used to the time difference. Although my sleep schedule is a mess, it gives me time at night to reflect on the day, which helps me follow the reasons why I am here, to witness and to learn. Over the past few days, we have visited the concentration camps of Auschwitz 1 and Auschwitz Birkenau. I went in with indescribably unknown expectations, and I was eager to embark on this experience of a lifetime.  As we walked over from our home away from home to Auschwitz 1, we were full of energy, and didn’t fully understand how our day and lives were about to change as we walked under the unsettling but prominent sign at the entrance of Auschwitz that reads “Arbeit Macht Frei,” which means “work sets you free.”

As we were walking over, the first thing that we saw was an old, grey building that looks like it hasn’t been touched in dozens of years. This building was the building where all of the prisoners arrived to the camp from their train cars, and you could still see the ruins of the rusty railroad tracks that led through the town and up to the building. From the moment I saw this building and the rusty railroad tracks, this experience became real for me, and I finally felt like I was in the presence of where all of this had happened. As soon as we walked onto the grounds of Auschwitz 1, our tour had begun, and we had received some unsettling facts. I thought that I had known a lot about Auschwitz and the Holocaust as a whole, but some of the facts hit me hard. I was told that there were up to one thousand people in each building at one point, and if I were asked how many people I would say could fit in each building comfortably, I would have said fifty. I could not even imagine fitting over 200 people in that building, let alone five times that. As we passed by the crematorium, I felt my stomach turn for the first time. We were told that up to 1,500 bodies were cremated per day, and there were up to 2,000 dead bodies per pile. When I heard this, I realized that they were killing more than 1,500 Jews per day. Over 1,500 people lost their innocent life every day, and there was nothing they could do about it. Before the war, there was around a 3.3 million Jewish population in Poland, which was one the biggest Jewish communities. Today in Poland, that number is drastically reduced. When standing on the grounds of these concentration, I was trying to think of words to describe what I was looking at, and one word that kept reoccurring was ‘hell’. The Holocaust, Auschwitz, and every death camp was the real life hell, and I still have questions that may never have an answer to them.

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The Beginning Of My Poland Journey

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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