Today, we took the day off from the COP and went to visit Auschwitz. We all thought it was very important to make that trip while we were in Poland.
It was by far the coldest day since we have been here, and we were punked: none of us were dressed as warmly as we had been on more temperate days—certainly not as warmly as we should have been. We went with a tour service, so we got a very thorough guided visit that lasted for more than 3 hours. We visited both “Auschwitz 1” and “Auschwitz-Birkenau,” each of which had its own character.
On the way there, we talked some about our experiences at the COP and in Poland generally. On the way back, no one said anything for the entire 70-minute ride.
As we left Birkenau, we all wrote down our most immediate, gut-level reflections in a couple of sentences. We share those thoughts with you now:
Erica: I didn’t know hair could last that long. It’s been over 80 years and we still have some remnants of a small percentage of people, a small part of their personhood that was savagely taken from them.
Noah: Visiting Auschwitz was a very moving experience. However, I felt a sense of detachment and distance by being there. It felt surreal to the point where I felt like I was on an old movie set. I struggled to comprehend and truly understand the suffering that occurred at the camp.
It also reminded me of the abuses currently happening in my own country and the realization that I have the privilege of obliviousness. I want to be better educated about what is happening in my own country and not be content with being a bystander.
Ilka: It hits very close to home, you know? Especially the part about the SS “just doing their job…”
Anna: In Birkenau, I was almost unbearably cold. My hands were turning purple. They were painful, then numb, then painful. My legs couldn’t carry me anywhere quickly. I was violently shivering.
I was wearing a coat, warm socks, and boots. They were wearing thin, ragged striped pajamas. I was there for an hour. They were there for a lifetime.
It was grey, everything grey. Hazy, cloudy, cold. The trees appeared as through fog, and the charcoal ground was dusted with white. The puddles were beginning to freeze over. The starkness and desolation of the landscape were a perfect parallel to the nightmare that took place at Birkenau.
Our guide told us that little children would lose their parents in the sorting process upon arrival at Auschwitz. They’d ask other prisoners when they’d see their mom, and prisoners would sardonically say, “you’ll see your mommy coming out of the top of that chimney.”
If you want to try to understand the pain and tragedy of Auschwitz, picture these things happening to your own family.
Erica again: What is justice? How do we ever atone for what action or inaction did to millions of people? Where was God during all that?
Bee: I found it gut wrenching that at the conclusion of the tour, our guide Simon mused about how hard it is for people to empathize with Auschwitz survivors, or with the experience of the Polish people. “We simply aren’t in the same boat,” he said.
I immediately thought of the oft-repeat words of the Fijian Presidency at the COP, who has reminded us at every turn for the past 12 months that we must see our futures as inextricably linked—that “We are all in the same canoe.”
I’d like to say I have had a great revelation about how to reconcile those two maritime analogies, but so far, I have not.
Our guide Simon referred over and over again to the fact that U.S. leaders knew, or had suspicions about what was happening in Poland as early as 1937. U.S. leaders knew that there was a grave threat to millions of innocent vulnerable people. Moreover, U.S. leaders knew what the cause of the threat was, but only chose to act once Americans themselves were attacked.
While we have been in Poland, we have watched as current U.S. leaders have shrugged off the possibility that millions of people around the globe are once again in grave danger. They have dismissed the idea that the U.S. bears the responsibility to use its monumental resources to protect vulnerable people in other parts of the world at the expense of its own comfort. We have watched as the behavior of our leaders has been characterized as “craven, irresponsible, and selfish.”
World War II ended less than 80 years ago. There are people alive today who lived through the Holocaust. The global community has had an opportunity to see just what happens when a population of people is annihilated—not only to the victims, but also to the survivors who have to live with the memories, guilt, anger, fear, and other emotions that often consume the rest of their lives.
Eighty years from now, in 2098, may our great-grandchildren still live in a world where they can return to Auschwitz to say the names of so many innocent victims of great evil. If they can, it will mean that in the intervening years, the global community was able to avert another great evil—and save millions of other innocent people from annihilation.