I learned about the Holocaust, concentration camps, and death camps in eighth grade last year, but what they taught us did not bring the emotions felt when I was at that camp. & I knew they had small beds, little food, and horrible conditions, but to see the beds stacked three high and very close together was even worse than I imagined. & When we went into the "bathroom" you saw a long row of "toilets" that were just holes one next to another on a cement slab about one and half feet off of the ground. & To see this was appalling and to try to imagine what it was like to be there with them was dreadful. Schools can try to teach you this but unless you see it, unless you are there, you cannot get a feeling of how they lived. &
Yesterday I discovered that after people were gassed and burned, their ashes were used as a fertilizer. &
Imagine being Jewish at a concentration camp, and imagine you had the upsetting job of taking the Jews that were gassed out to be burned. & Imagine taking your mother, father, sister, brother, best friend, and other relatives to be burned. & Taking their dead body to be cremated would be dreadful, but you had no choice. & You were a prisoner inside the barb wire fences, the guard tower with the heartless people watching you making sure you did not escape. & Yesterday I tried to imagine these things and even though I tried to feel what they felt I know it must have been even worse. & They had little food, scarce water, and terrible conditions. & They were put through selection to see whether you would or would not die immediately. &
Yesterday I saw something I will never forget. & Yes, it was hard to know a heartless people walked the grounds I walked that day. & Yes, it was hard to be somewhere where thousands of innocent people were killed for no reason, but I needed to be there. & We all need to be there at some point in our lives to see what they suffered through, to see what they had go through. & This experience did make me angry, sad, and so many other emotions. & Why would someone do that to these poor people? & How did some of these people survive like this for all that time? & No one will ever no the answer to questions like these. & You can say they survived by doing what was demanded of them and not being "selected", but the emotional pain must have been overwhelming, yet some still survived. & So yesterday I left the textbook behind, because a book cannot show you the pain of Auschwitz like being there. &
I would like to say one more thing: & in a small way I felt proud to be there. & In a small way I felt somewhat honored, because I was walking the grounds where the survivors of this horrific camp once walked. & I was walking the grounds where true heroes walked.
Respectfully submitted by Taylor Peterson, a proud member & of the Kafka Project's Magical Mystery Literary History Tour.
