My Tour of Hell: Auschwitz Concentration Camp

My own tour of Auschwitz Concentration Camp started at 5:43 am from the bedroom of the apartment we have rented for two days with the sound of the trains rolling through the town of Katowice, Poland.  Trains now mainly used to transport perky college students on their way to a bright future.   Katowice, a town of 300,000 people, boasts an impressive resume focused on advancing technology for Central Europe.  

But this morning I heard the trains of the past, hoards of Polish, Czech, German, Norwegian, and even Greek prisoners crammed into small box cars and sent to the concentration camp ...one of the largest in Europe.  

...  

The official tour produced no smiling selfies in front of historic buildings or beautiful landscapes:  

I just cried, sobbed openly.   Then walked alone....  quiet, humbled, sad, introspective, searching, overwhelmed.  The vastness of it... Over a million people slaughtered here.    The process so refined; the glitch was they couldn't burn bodies fast enough or they would have killed more. 

Buildings precisely organized to make the horrific process so efficient.   Such a variety of ways to kill people: starvation, over work, gas, suffocation, isolation, firing squads, drownings, and odd medical experiments.

I feel humbled, fortunate for not understanding the suffering of these victims.  But I can feel the sadness of their destination.    

I have no illusion that my place in society is anything but lucky; the doors of opportunity have always been open for me.  I would like to think I am smart enough to walk through these doors, but even that feels so self serving.  I simply stumble and then trip  ... The inertia of the fall propels me through. 

How I wish more than life itself we could have learned from such a dark episode, but still today we struggle with places in the world that provide environments equally as inhumane. 

The visit leaves me with a deep need to write an apology to my Jewish friends.....what an unthinkable history.  

So tonight as I listen to more trains cutting through the town of Katowice, I whisper out into the dark of the evening a message to my Jewish friends ...

"I'm sorry, so deeply sorry.   Wear your Star of David proudly.  May we not forget your history."