This is not a trip, but it most definitely had a destination - by Charlotte Ference

There are countless elements during this trip that cause me immense pain and sorrow on this journey. These moments highlight an experience that defies language, and challenges every conception of what humanity might include.

Every day we walk on this ground, our breath is whisked from our lungs with a power that this earth cannot compete. and we are forced to bear witness to a tragedy that is both indescribable and demanding of description.

The sky is blue, even in hell. 

            Religion is an essential framework to understand the Shoah, and I understand that painfully well after our days here.  What is also present, and less overt, is the overwhelming racism that permeates the minimally cruel actions to the most grotesque of human actions.  After hearing of the plight of the Jewish citizens, we were told constantly at each memorial and museum that of course there were Christian and non-believers as well, but less.  Despite this comparison of pure numbers, both Christian crosses and Jewish gravestone plaques mark the mass graves in Krakow and the Auschwitz system camps.

            I think there is a danger in overly prioritizing religion, and religious hatred as the primary motivation for the Shoah.  Our professors go out of their way to explain how much more complex this relationship was, but still I think even the museums and memorials illustrate both a national and global desire to label this as a religious war.

            One cannot ignore that Polish-Christians were interned with Polish-Jewish citizens in Auschwitz.  Indeed, the first of those who were murdered by Hitler’s fanatics were Polish citizens, and Soviet Union Prisoners of War. Whether they were Jewish or not was not the concern of those murdering them, but the victims were condemned to death for participating in actions against the Nazi regime.

Can you tell what their faith looks like from their pictures? 

            To remove the focus on religion is incorrect morally and factually, but also is removing the racist and nationalistic overtones from which the Shoah was able to develop.  Using religious hatred and anti-semitism as a convenient platform to establish their twisted and horrid ideology, Nazis were clear about articulating their goal of a singularly racial world.  The Nazis had plans for removing other minorities after the so-called “Jewish Problem” had been solved, and let no one be mistaken in thinking the Shoah would have ended with the slaughter of every Jewish citizen of the world.  The Holocaust was not a religious war, it was not a battle of Christianity versus Judaism.  It was twisted and perverted version of Nationalism against any transcendental other that dared attract loyalty and obedience.

            It seems unnecessary to say it ought never happen again.  It is absurd to acknowledge that there have been dozens of genocide since the WWII ended.

View from the guard's tower at the front of Auschwitz-Birkenau

There was no way out when the train tracks stopped inside the camp. 

Charlotte Ference