A new look at present day Auschwitz Birkenau.
by Andrew Briss
When I used to picture a concentration camp I imagined it as cold, dark, rainy, cloudy, and hopeless; yet when I visited Auschwitz Birkenau located in Poland in the summer of 2008, I got a totally different feel.
Before I went on my voyage to Poland and Israel this summer, I was trying to prepare myself mentally for a rude awakening to the darkest past of Jewish history: the Holocaust. Looking at pictures of concentration camps, watching videos on the Internet, talking to adults about how to deal with emotions, I thought that I was prepared both physically and mentally for my trip to Poland along with 48 other Jewish teens all from the Denver area. After landing in Poland, we were scheduled to take a bus ride for three hours to Auschwitz Birkenau, the largest concentration camp during the Second World War. Pulling up to the entrance and looking into Auschwitz Birkenau I was not prepared for what I saw. There was green grass, flowers growing, blue skies, all opposites of what I thought a concentration camp was supposed to look like.
Venturing to the entrance of Auschwitz Birkenau looking at the green fields, hearing the birds chirp, I had mixed emotions about what my eyes were seeing. Was I dreaming? Are my eyes deceiving me? How could a place so beautiful, so full of life have housed death, hatred, and so much violence? It was hard to concentrate on the full meaning of what was behind the barbed wired fences and the security lookout posts planted around the fences there to keep the prisoners in.
We started our tour by entering the main gate and walking down the famous railroad tracks to the separation section of the camp, where the prisoners were split up into certain categories based on age, sex, and skilled abilities. We walked the same route as the innocent prisoners, who had been detained by the Nazis back in the early 1940s, and it was hard to comprehend that over 20,000 men, women, and children walked this same path to a certain death. To know that innocent bodies were sorted, showered, gassed and cremated in the exact place where we stood was astonishing, yet, it triggered confused emotions for me. Don’t get me wrong, I had many thoughts running through my head: How could the Nazi’s do this? Why didn’t we, as Jews, fight back? What is wrong with me, why am I not crying?
I had a deep conversation with one of my American guides, and asked him why I was not crying? His response was, “Andrew, emotions are not always supposed to be on show for everyone to know what you are feeling. Even though you don’t think you are taking anything out of this experience, you are taking out everything your mind is willing to comprehend. It might be confusing and hard to concentrate, but you’re feeling what your conscience is letting you feel.” After hearing those words and interpreting them in my mind, I suddenly knew exactly what he was talking about and why I wasn’t crying.
Even though Auschwitz Birkenau was a horrible place for the innocent people of the Holocaust, I felt that even confused emotions at a concentration camp are respectable, because I took out the knowledge of what I’m capable of understanding and using for the future. Because of the sunny, green, vibrant nature of a place like Auschwitz Birkenau, it made me see that this kind of hopeless occurrence could happen anywhere, at any time, and we need to make sure it doesn’t.
