Sunday, March 15, 2015

Preparing for the Absence of Presence



Tomorrow morning I will embark for what I think will be the most transformational and emotional experience of my life. I will enter the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp, the site where hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom were Jewish, we slaughtered unjustly.

Though this will be the first time I will be entering the camp, I have seen it. When looking out of the window of my room at the center, I can see buildings that were part of the camp. Very literally, we’re staying right across the street. I find myself often thinking about the place I’m in. That 70 years ago, this town served as the last and final stop for hundreds of thousands of people. Where people were transported to perhaps serve a purpose, slave labor, or await their murder. It is amazing and eerie that I will walk the same grounds and stand inside the same buildings on and in which people were starved, beaten, tortured, and killed.

In the course text, a memoir titled The Holocaust Kingdom by Alexander Donat—a survivor , survived the war and several concentration camps. He was transported to Auschwitz but was only there for a few minutes. His wife however, was imprisoned there and remarkably survived.

Tomorrow these words will become all the more real.

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