Auschwitz- (Graphic... Read with Care)

Every now and then I caught sight of a bullet hole in the brick wall of a building and the realization of the magnitude of the place hit me like an overcrowded freight train to the chest. The storm outside did nothing for my nerves: lightning flashed down just outside and thunder immediately and deafeningly shook the buildings. Sheets of water washed over the camp, turning dirt paths to sticky mud and setting ominous tones. My stomach was in knots for hours- I felt nauseated and faint.
I tried to find a message in the place. A little note of "it's okay because..."
But there was nothing. There's nothing there but pain and anguish and murder.
Upon entering Auschwitz, I was struck by how normal everything looked. The only hint of the monstrous history from afar was the lingering barbed-wire fence. They lined the walkway to the museum with blown up photos of famous world leaders paying tribute to the monument. Political leaders, spiritual leaders, infidels- all humbled before the shrines to the masses of the murdered. 'Good,' I thought to myself. 'They should all come here. They should ALL see what happens when leaders turn blind-eyes.' I felt so sick. Why- WHY did it take so long for major world powers to step in?! Why did the United States stand back for YEARS while people were slaughtered?
Through the main gate with its mocking message of "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work brings Freedom"), where the prisoners were marched to their daily deadly toil, rows of brick buildings stand. Inside the buildings are sheets of records, refurnished rooms, clothes, shoes, torture devices, and murals with stories of daily life and death in Auschwitz. But the most painful to see were the pictures. Row upon row of the mug shots of the prisoners, deportation dates and death dates (often within mere months of each other) printed along the bottom. Hundreds and hundreds of faces staring blankly- dazed, beaten, and confused. Heads shaved, lips bloodied, they stare out from their frames pleading for justice. Justice? What does that word even MEAN in a crime like this? Down every hallway, faces. In every room, faces. In this camp ALONE over 1.2 million people- let me say that again- one point two MILLION people- were killed. One million two hundred thousand faces watching you walk through their final moments, asking you why it had to happen...

One room describing the selection process had photos taken at the trains with captions nonchalantly pointing out "before selection" on a picture of the haggard crowds by the trains, "after selection" on a picture of confiscated luggage piled beside the now-empty walkways beside the trains, and one "on the way to death"
On the way to death. A dozen children in frame, one too little to walk being carried by a grandmother. Two little boys in the front bravely leading a third who is sulking. They look curiously at the camera. They think they're going for a shower. "On the way to death..." I wanted to vomit. I swallowed sharply and moved on. I had to move on.
That was nowhere near the worst of it. The buildings where they convicted people of criminally contacting the outside world or obtaining food were sentenced to death by starvation and locked in windowless rooms where many simply suffocated. The building where evil doctors did experiments on sterilization and genetics, mutilating and murdering countless women and twins. The wall where prisoners- men, women, and children- were stripped and shot. It had been torn down but reassembled by the museum, riddled with bullet holes and now lit by candles and laden with memorial stones and flowers.
The gas chamber and the ovens.
They never mention the fingernail scratches on the walls of the gas chamber.
They never mention the soot thick on the walls and ceiling of the ovens.
"This chamber was designed for up to one thousand people," I overheard a tour guide say of the gas chamber we stood in. One thousand people, crammed like sardines into THIS room where they were soon painfully poisoned, then burned to ash, eliminating all record of their very existence. After a few years, the Nazis stopped even recording their arrival. They just went straight from the train to oblivion...

Those faces, I think, will be following me and begging explanation I cannot provide for my whole life. They're there behind my eyelids. And when I look at the faces of all the strangers I'm surrounded by out here, I see them flash from their pink healthy selves, to gaunt tortured mugshots of themselves, then back again- little reminders of the sheer humanity of the victims. It could have been someone just like that man, that woman, their little baby. It could have been all of us, here, on this train, thinking we're just being relocated, not knowing the horrors in store at our destination.

I took a train away from Poland last night. I arrived in Vienna, Austria this morning- and I don't want to go exploring. Everything here is tainted now. I left a bag on the train with my money in it. I desperately sought help and it was generously given and I got my bag back and I was so grateful- but the man who helped me showed such blatant and shocking racism toward the Polish people who ran my last train, all I could think about was the camp and the halls and the rows and rows of Polish faces, murdered by people like him, people with hatred and discrimination in their hearts.
I'm in Vienna, Austria, home of concertos and operas and Mozart, and yet all I can hear are the echoes of cries sixty five years past.

I want to go home.