Heavy Hearts

“Arbeit Macht Frei.” Work will set you free.

There are moments in your life that you instantly and profoundly recognize will affect your worldview until the day you die, and this past Saturday was one of those days. Our class had the opportunity to pay a visit the Auschwitz and Birkenau Nazi concentration camps in Poland, and never in my life have I been so haunted.

Anyone who has ever been to Auschwitz or any similar camp can attest to the fact that no words, no pictures, no video testimony can adequately prepare you for the true horror of what lies inside those barbed wire fences. Walking away from a single day in those camps, I am irrevocably scarred in the best kind of way. My appreciation for the luxuries of my life as well as my terror at the atrocities of past and present human rights violations have never been so clear. Never again will I plead apathy to the injustice of the world.

The shoes. The shoes were what broke me. Touring the blocks, I held it together reasonably well as our guide outlined the ways in which prisoners were mercilessly beaten, humiliated, tortured, experimented on, and ultimately murdered, but when we got to the part of the tour where the belongings of the victims were held, the tears came. Gazing upon mountains of looted shoes, luggage, and two tons of shaved human hair from the corpses of the victims of Auschwitz, I cried. I cried, and I watched as one by one my peers were broken by this place.

To set foot in a gas chamber where innumerable lives were mercilessly and horrifically stolen, to walk through the crematorium where their bodies were systematically turned to ash, to gaze through the doors of the torture cells where prisoners were starved, suffocated, and condemned to slow agonizing death evoked emotion more intense than I have ever experienced before.

I laughed a bit when I discovered that one of our classes for this trip was exclusively a field study consisting of weekend field trips, wondering how much we could really “learn” from touring a bunch of miscellaneous European cities. Now though, I revoke that laughter because I learned more about history and humanity and morality and civic responsibility in one day at Auschwitz than I might in a year of traditional class. Experiences like this one remind us why we must learn and remember the tragedies of the past lest they be repeated.

My soul aches as I write this because I know that so many of the people I hold dear will never truly understand the pain of injustice, that they will continue in their privileged everyday lives, oblivious to and apathetically detached from the misery of the world. This is why I travel. Ignorant is never a term I want to be associated with, and I hope that through my adventures, I can bring some enlightenment into my own life, as well as those around me who do not understand the importance of living as a world citizen.

“Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” –George Santayana

Never forget.