Tomorrow morning I will embark for what I think will be the
most transformational and emotional experience of my life. I will enter the
Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp, the site where hundreds of
thousands of people, most of whom were Jewish, we slaughtered unjustly.
Though this will be the first time I will be entering the
camp, I have seen it. When looking out of the window of my room at the center,
I can see buildings that were part of the camp. Very literally, we’re staying
right across the street. I find myself often thinking about the place I’m in.
That 70 years ago, this town served as the last and final stop for hundreds of
thousands of people. Where people were transported to perhaps serve a purpose,
slave labor, or await their murder. It is amazing and eerie that I will walk
the same grounds and stand inside the same buildings on and in which people
were starved, beaten, tortured, and killed.
In the course text, a memoir titled The Holocaust Kingdom by Alexander Donat—a survivor , survived the
war and several concentration camps. He was transported to Auschwitz but was
only there for a few minutes. His wife however, was imprisoned there and
remarkably survived.
Tomorrow these words will become all the more real.
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