Auschwitz

Arbeit Mach Freit.

The letters stare at us - twists of rusted, wrought iron, flaking with age.

I don’t speak German, but I know what these words mean.

They’ve been spoken in my home dozens of times on holidays and family events.

The elders in my home - passed now - told stories of these words with a deadly seriousness that unnerved me as a child.

Now, having been there, I feel like I understand better.

I’ve seen the grounds, the showers, the tracks that split in the middle, the crematorium that opens to the sky and feels too big to be real.

And although the grass is now electric green, the gravel is trodden only by tourists, the buildings are full of glass cases that hold stained shoes and models,

It feels painful to be here.

Our assigned tour guide adds to the unease of the place.

She’s bubbly and blonde and seems much too excited to talk about genocide with a group of teenagers who have direct ties to the destruction in our collective past.

I try not to take it to heart, but I am young, and my emotions swirl tempestuously despite my best efforts.

This place means something to us, reminds us we were once one Chosen people, even though nowadays it doesn’t feel that way.

We died together here.

A shrine of sorts is resting against a wall meant once for execution.

It looks indecorously cheerful - the bright colors clash with the stained, weather-worn stone.

I am so moved by the sadness, the profound loss that fills this place, that I leave my favorite ring on the collection at the base of the shrine.

Opals and diamonds seem like such a small price to pay for the dead who cannot leave with us.

I am only able to leave and enter the connected building when a hand takes mine, bringing me back to the present.

Inside, only frail glass separates us from empty cans of gas, plaster models of the grounds before the Allies razed them, and then, in the final room:

Baby clothes.

Shoes.

Mountains and mountains and mountains of shoes.

We are mere generations from that rubber and fabric.

When I return to the states, things are very, very different.

I obsess for weeks over the ghosts that we left behind whenever I notice the absence of my ring.

I tell my parents about the electric green grass, my grievances with the guide, the tears I shed at each place along our tour.

I write about it and my grandparents cry when they read it, they lavish me with praise, and although I have always craved their approval, I now understand that the sacrifices I made to reach this place were more arduous than I knew they would be.

I am proud of myself for my new-found empathy and understanding of the world, though my heart carries a level of pain I am unfamiliar with.

I am grateful and my prayers reflect a selflessness and wish for community I had never desired before.

I am changed, and everyone seems to notice.

I face the endings I have to accept with melancholy still clinging to my heart, a brave face saving me from having to explain too much.

It has been twenty years since Auschwitz.

Twenty years since my life changed irrevocably.

The place, the time, the event, do not seem like impersonal, objective pieces of history anymore,

My understanding of them can no longer be contained in a textbook.

It’s tangible now - I’ve touched it.

And as painful as it is to remember the words, the violence, the vastness of our collective loss -

I am better because I hold them close.