How? -I Don't Understand. (By: Krissy Bucchi)

As if yesterday wasn’t difficult, today wouldn’t be easier, or would it be? I hoped it would, but how could it? Today we were going to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The bus pulled up to the camp and we unloaded in front of the main entrance. When Anna, our tour guide, gathered with our group we began walking away from the camp down a muddy path towards railroad tracks that had the remaining cattle cars.

They were wooden, a tiny barred window in the top right side of the car, they were small and about 60-70 people were jammed inside. Innocent people died in the cars, they were suffocated; babies, children, mothers, men, elders. I don’t understand.

I tended to stay in the back of the group, not because I wanted to wait to take a perfect picture or get a good angle with my video camera, but because I needed to be alone. I needed the gap from the group. Anna would gather us to talk and I stood silent in the back; lips trembling, legs shaking, eyes watering, not because it was chilly and slightly windy but because my heart was breaking.

So we walked through the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The large arch beneath the Nazi’s watchtower, the railroad track that split off in three different directions, the barracks, the rubble from destroyed buildings and gas chambers, it was all there.

It was real. This was real. I was actually witnessing history with my own two eyes. The barracks where prisoners slept, the cracks in the floor and on the bottom of the walls where snow came in during the winter, where rodents found there way inside and called it their home too. I don’t understand.

I walked into another barrack. A piece of cement about three feet off the ground with holes in it, the latrines, toilets. 4-6 people to a toilet at a time, and you could only use it twice a day. A cold, skinny, boney, bottom sitting on cement to relieve yourself. I don’t understand.

Block #25, the death block where prisoners were selected and kept to wait inside before sent to the gas chambers. The cries from inside these walls that were heard from the other barracks were haunting. I heard them too.

It was dark inside the barrack. The beds were made of wooden planks that wrapped around the inside walls. There were three levels; the top, the middle, and the ground. The strongest prisoners slept at the top, the weakest on the bottom. The windows were barred shut, there was no escape. I don’t understand.

Another barrack was the washroom. A long narrow sink that extended to either end of the barrack in the middle with a sink on two sides. With a washroom so small for so many people, how could anyone actually feel clean after leaving? With an infestation of head lice in the camps, could a washroom really help? I don’t understand.

We walked further down into the depths of the camp. Anna stopped our group by a picture with some words to talk about it. I felt my mind drifting away and starring at the middle railway track. The track where prisoners were separated from loved ones and sorted into workers or sent to the gas chambers.

My eyes kept staring, my mind kept thinking. I walked away from my group and onto the track. My heart was pounding with each step I took getting closer, but I had to. I had to experience what it felt like to be on the tracks. I bent down and knelt, but it wasn’t enough. My right hand extended out to touch the cold metal track. The track that the cattle cars unloaded millions of prisoners from, I was touching it with my own living flesh. This is where my heart broke.

As my eyes fell several tears and my left arm clenched at my chest, I slowly picked up my head and in the distance saw the Nazi watchtower and the long railway tracks extending towards the outside of the camp. With a lump in my throat, I wiped my face and stood up to join back with my group.

There was a memorial area where one of the gas chambers was destroyed. People left flowers around the memorial, it seemed peaceful in this area.

As I walked around there was another gas chamber that was destroyed. There were steps before it and my group sat down. There was something special about this area of the camp. My classmates got emotional and hid their faces. Instead, I stood up and walked down the stairs towards the barbwire fence.

The air was misty and tall narrow green trees were in the distance. In this moment my mind shifted from listening to the questions and comments in my head, to the nature that surrounded me. I was so consumed with the thoughts in my head that I forgot to listen. But here in the back of the camp, I felt like I could listen again.

It was the sound of the birds. Think of waking up early in the mornings of April to the birds chirping outside your window, that’s what I heard. It was beautiful. It was hope. This is exactly what I needed to hear, it was closure. It warmed my broken heart and it no longer felt heavy to walk the rest of the camp. I cried as I looked between the barbed wire fences to see the birds flying high in the trees. It made me smile for the first time today. That was God.

The remainder of the day spent walking the camps was full of jotting down notes, taking pictures, listening to Anna, and creating memories with my group of classmates. After leaving the camp today I felt light, hopeful, at peace, comforted, and more positive. However, the one question and statement that still is unclear to me: How? –I don’t understand.

How could something like this actually happen? How was any of this allowed to happen? How could someone think this was all acceptable? Even though I have been studying this history, and I knew all of the ‘technical’ answers and understood, I just couldn’t help but still not understand, if that makes sense. I mean, none of this actually makes sense, does it? More questions, that’s enough for today.