On our way to Auschwitz-Birkenau this morning, I was so nervous about what we might see that I felt queasy. However, my first impression was fairly neutral.The trees and old brick buildings reminded y of a living history park near my town. The gate did not affect me at all, despite being perhaps the world’s most well known symbol of genocide. The gas chamber also hardly affected me. I knew that I was standing in a room where ten thousand people died, and I tried to visualize that number relative to the size of my town, but I still couldn’t process it. I don’t think the human brain is meant to. Part of me
Inside of the exhibits, I felt very differently. I was most upset by seeing the physical evidence of the murders. That felt very, very, real. I could barely look at the pile of hair, and the baby clothes made me cry. I imagined the babies re-appearing within their clothing, and everyone else somehow coming back for the shoes they left behind.
But somehow, Birkenau was still much more upsetting than Auschwitz. I am still trying to understand why. I think that while the exhibitions at Auschwitz were extremely difficult to get through, the outside grounds did not feel “real,” potentially because of the cafe, gift shop, and all the other amenities that almost tricked me into believing it was built for tourists. I was disturbed to learn yesterday that the infamous barbed wire is replaced every year or so. Birkenau, however seems to have been left unattended, which makes it feel threatening. It is not packaged and presented to tourists in the same way that Auschwitz is, so I could really sense the history and it made me sick.
I found myself completely unable to step over the train tracks that carried Jews into the camp. It felt strange and wrong to move perpendicularly to the path the victims were forced to take, and that their spirits might still be taking, in some sense. It felt like walking through a crowd of ghosts. I ended up walking away, acutely aware that that was not an option for the people I was supposed to be honoring.
I was tremendously anxious and upset, and I still am. While it seems important to feel that way, I am not really sure who benefits. I can remember the spirits of the deceased, and do everything in my power to stop something like this from ever happening again, but tour groups with cameras and headphones cannot change the past. There is no way to preserve or approach Auschwitz-Birkenau in a way that feels right. But if it were up to me, I think I might bury the hair and the baby clothes like you would bury a body, and close the camps forever.