Reflections on My Trip to Auschwitz Last Week

[urkels_beaker]

So much has been written about the holocaust that to add further words about so seemingly incomprehensible an event would seem simply self indulgent. Yet, after visiting the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland last week, I feel compelled to say something to the darkness of what I saw there.

Comments

[lizardqueen]

Powerful writing about a powerfully disturbing event/place. I'm glad you tried to look at every face, because that is the only way we can now honor these people: by recognizing them, by realizing that that could be us in their place. Thank you for this.

[urkels_beaker]

Thanks for your kind words Patricia. I think you are absoloutely right - empathy is the key to human understanding and what we need to work most on.

I really want to figure out what I can do to further my concerns in this area. I feel it is too big and too overwhelming to simply sit on top of, which would becomes a form of festering and overwhelming repression of conscience in the end I fear.

But, the dark truth in the back of my head is that, despite the central importance of ensuring nobody ever forgets, the urgency also is to be found in current situations in the world where the same misery plays out unseen.

At present I work for a charity and I feel I do good work (although I need to find a way to do more) but I am moving to the States next year and I will need to find a way to continue in doing something positive on a daily basis once there too.

That's my hope. I hope it doesn't sound too self-obsessed. My head is just so full of questions as to what I am doing about any of this. Questions I need to answer.

[figmint]

I agree with everything you've said. In the face of such horror, the only thing we can do (now) for them is to acknowledge them as having been alive, and mourn for their death.

In all of this, what I'll most never understand is how otherwise normal, even kind, people were able to turn off the switch of compassion. Responding to a crying child is such an innate part of human nature. I know that part of it is re-defining the victim as "not human," but even that doesn't explain it either, because you wouldn't do that to an animal either.

Thanks, urkels_beaker, that was a thoughtful and moving post. My chest hurts.

Dark Horrific mark on Humanity

[wolfenfang]

Excellent well written piece dude. To stand there like we did had a harrowing effect on me too. Surrounded by the Ghosts of a Dark Past.
Wolfenfang.