In all of my life I never thought that Poland was going to be the first place in Europe I put my foot on---if you want to be technical it was the airport in Berlin but there was not much adventure there so I don't count it. I decided to travel to Poland with my fellow Ionians to learn more about the horrific crimes of the Holocaust, how the Jewish and Christian religion has grow together since then, and how we can put all of this into perspective.
Although my class and I were jet lagged to the point that our eyes had trouble staying open, and we had sudden day dreams of spending Spring break in a more...tropical place, we could not be more excited to have finally arrived at the Jewish Centre. The Centre is beautiful and so welcoming, but something that hit me like a brick in the stomach was passing Auschwitz 1 on the drive over..and then pulling into the parking lot across the street, where the Centre is located. This is when life became real to me. I realized that this was real. That the streets of Oswiecim were once marched through by German soldiers, invading the lives of innocent people and hiding them from the public's eyes in these dehumanizing camps. Something stirred inside me, like a feeling of restlessness. Even though there is literally nothing I could have done about what happened in WWII I wondered why no one had until it was too late. Sure there were people of resistance, but what really struck me was that this happened in the first place, that a group of people so infiltrated with racism could twist the world around them into believing that genocide was the "final solution."
What we passed by on that drive, that tiny peace of Auschwitz, brought up all these questions and feelings that I knew would be answered on this trip and made me eager to learn.
That day we also went to a museum in Oswiecim, which was located where the Jewish temple of this town once was. There, our tour guide explained to us that 99% of the people in Auschwitz who were murdered were Jewish. That numbered rattled my mind because even though I knew that most people who were killed were Jewish, I also knew there were other targets, such as homosexuals and mentally handicapped people, so to find out that 99% of them were Jewish really made me sick. I don't understand the hostility toward them, I just think that the German's needed someone to blame for their loss on land in WWI.
We also went to the Jewish Cemetery that day, and I don't think I've ever felt such remorse. The Nazi's invaded Poland and destroyed everything that wasn't Christian, including cemeteries. There were gaping holes in the ground that made me wonder if the resting place was bombed. Graves were all over the place, fallen over and broken in pieces. This happened in the mid 1900's and still there is such devastation left even after decades of restoration. There was no just violence against those of the Judaism faith, the deceased couldn't even rest in peace.
-Rachel
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