Student Reflection: Auschwitz

Auschwitz I is the smaller camp. It mostly housed Polish and political prisoners. Unlike Birkenau, it was smaller and is still mostly preserved.

It was haunting. The preserved barracks were home to an exhibition. I saw collections of human hair, glasses, suitcases, prosthetics, and shoes. Victims were viewed as products, not human beings.

Walking through the Yad Vashem exhibit, I leafed through the book of names, a more complete version of which I will encounter in a month in Jerusalem. Every page was hundreds of deaths.

We also visited the execution area/death wall. Murder was a show. Not a crime.

There was also the first gas chamber, originally experimental, preserved here. I could barely stay in for two minutes. The air was heavier. It was a sea of suffering.

When we arrived at Birkenau, all I initially saw was the gate. A haunting symbol of arrival—an entrance to hell.

Jews were not considered human. They shared communal toilets. They went at the same time, next to each other on full display to the guards and to each other.

Barracks were row after row of beds. Well, if you could call them beds. They were more like shelves. They were designed to store 5 or 6 bodies every night. Prisoners had to keep all belongings on them. There was no privacy.

When I saw the ruins of the crematoria for the first time, I cried. All I could hear were the screams of the children, the women, the elderly, and the otherwise deemed “unuseful.” They were tricked. They were promised a warm shower. They were terrorized with gassing and slave labor, shoveled their bodies into the chimneys to burn. Their ashes were scattered in the rivers. We can never give them a proper burial.

Walking back on the tracks, I hit every wooden plank with my foot. Normally such a long walk would tire me, but all I could think of was each inch the train would crawl to reach the final destination—death.

We finished back at the main gate. A mincha that I will never forget. Every word of the Kaddish weighed on my tongue. 1.1 million murdered. Children. Adults. Elderly. Mothers. Fathers. Siblings. Grandparents. Friends. Loved Ones.

Is there an answer to Auschwitz? No. But there is a response. Never forget what happened. Never forget the lives stolen, the humanity destroyed, and the hatred espoused. But, never forget our responsibilities. As humans, we must never let this happen to another. As Jews, we must never let this happen again.

We’ve failed. For eighty years we have failed. We, as individuals, can do nothing to free the hostages or stop the Uyghur Genocide. But we can act on an individual scale. To be kind to the stranger and to love each other.