I found it hard to find hope today.
Today, we visited Auschwitz II - Birkenau. This concentration camp is huge, and twenty
times larger than Auschwitz I. Walking around
and learning all the facts about the camps was a strange feeling for me. This place is physically real. The statistics on how 700 people slept in a
barrack at a time, 40,000 people living in the camp at a time, 4-8 people slept
on a wooden or concrete bed at a time and many more horrors are all real. Yet my mind cannot process this. It does not seem real.
In the middle of the camp is an infamous ramp. Families were unloaded off the train wagons
and onto the ramp. Women and children were put on one side and men on the
other. These families, torn away from each without a proper goodbye, did not
know that most likely, they were not ever going to see one another again.
Train tracks that run through Birkenau
The wagon people were unloaded off
They then waited in-line for the selection process. They did
not know that they were waiting to be sent to either the camp to suffer or to
the gas chambers to die followed by the crematorium. One survivor said and I roughly quote that
they, “Expected the worst, but did not expect the unbelievable.” That is where my head is right now at this
point. I take in the facts, but I still just
cannot fathom this piece of history. I
cannot emotionally wrap my head around it.
This is a physical place, Birkenau, and we stood today on the grounds of
mass execution.
We also visited the gas chambers in the back of the
camp. They are five gas chambers and
most of them would hold 1500-2000 people at a time. I could not help but think of my pops, who
was a marine in the 1960s. He told me stories, passed on to him by older
marines, about the gas chambers and the Nazis when I was a little child. He told me that the SS would lie to the
Jewish prisoners telling them that they were being sent to take a shower but
instead murder them, filling the gas chambers with poisonous air. This memory flashed back to me today as we
learned about the specifics of the process. This story is real. I never really
understood the extent of what he was saying until now. The prisoners believed
they were taking a shower! They were given a bar of soap and hooks to hang
their clothes up in a changing room.
They were lied to up until their final moments of life. Where was the respect for human dignity?
The gas chamber
We walked through an administration house where hundreds of
thousands of previous humans have walked through. In this building, prisoners where stripped of
their clothes, valuables, hair and identities.
They were for now on only referred to as a number with a pair of striped
pajamas.
How did people find hope in this place of ashes, horror, and
despair? While walking through the camp,
it started to hail and we became really cold.
It sent me into reality. Prisoners lots of times did the same walk we
were doing. Sometimes, they had no clothes nor shoes even. But they continued. Where did they find hope?
And then it made sense to me.
Sometimes, you can’t just find hope. But hope is available for everyone. Hope is something you have to chose to have. It
must have been so hard for these brave men and women. But they had the courage to believe in something
that seemed so far away, a small flicker that maybe they would be saved. Just maybe they would make it through and see
their loved ones again. Thus, despite
all the odds, they had to believe in their human dignity and worth, and carry
on.
After it hailed, we held a small memorial service in honor
of the the men, women, and children that were lost in that place. Right after the service, the rain stopped, the
sun came out, we heard birds start singing, and church bells rang in the
distance. As we walked down the ramp and
out of the camp, I felt a slight sense of peace and yes, hope. Hope can be seen
in the little things. You have to choose
to believe in it.
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