Why I felt "nothing" -AUSCHWITZ

December 17, 2017. Is it possible to even describe what Auschwitz really is? Walking around, and seeing all of the buildings and pathways and the only thing that kept racing through my mind was that death happened right where I was standing. Hundreds of thousands.

We started off the tour with a one hour bus ride from Krakow to Auschwitz. I didnt know what to really expect, honestly. When we got there we started our tour right under this famous gateway. the sign meaning "work sets you free." The prisoners, after a long day at work, would walk through and see the exact sign that I so casually walked by. I was numb at that point. I think that it is so much to even wrap my head around. We went into 4 different buildings at this first camp that were called blocks. There was 21 of them.

The first three had a lot of old writings, and statics about the deaths at the camp.

The last room we went into, we were instructed not take pictures, and after I walked in I understood. Along 2 whole walls was piles and piles of hair that they found after liberation. Real human hair from innocent people. Mostly brown hair, and I sat there looking at one specific strand and thinking, "who was this person, what was their life like before being stripped their very own hair, and what is their story in the camp before most likely being murdered." That will haunt me for a long time.

The last building was in its original condition. This is where you would go to be 'punished.' Small, not even rooms, but brick boxes where they would be shoved into in the pitch black with no food or water, to be starved to death. This building led out into a small blocked off area with a big pole running through it. The jews hands were tied to it so their feet could not touch the gound, and they were shot right out in the public. This area was a silence zone, and just to be standing there with a cold breeze hitting my face, looking at this in complete silence, and again, I have no emotion to express how I felt.

There are real human ashes in this picture. They used it as fertilizer, and can you guess who had to lay the fertilizer? We always think of The Holocaust as a mass murder, which it was, but I think that this tour made me think more about each individual that walked through the gates of this hell.

After we finished walking through there, we headed to Birkenau. Birkenau is the place where the big gas chambers were used. Usually someone didn,t stay here for more then a couple weeks before being gassed. The actual gas chamber was destroyed, but all of the ruins from the building were still there. Our tour guide told us that if you were to dig right by it you would find ashes, and bones buried. I thought by this time I would be in tears. Walking into a place where nearly 1.5 million innocent men, women, and children were murder. But nothing..

I have sat here trying to think of the right words to describe what I saw today, but there are no words that I can tell you guys to help grasp. On my charter bus back to krakow I thought about everything I saw and the dark, terror that happened behind the fences of this place.

I will remeber this experience for the rest of my life, and I hope that everyone can go and learn about the horrors of Auschwitz.

Holly Catherine

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