What do you bring with you if you only get to pack a suitcase?
What do you bring with you if you believe that you’re going to survive?

For almost a week I have been putting off to post this. Almost didn’t do it. Almost pretended like this wasn’t a stop in my journey, like I wasn’t here.

There aren’t so many words. There were lots and lots of people, crowds that got more quiet as the tours progressed. People came out, heavily silent.

Our guide was amazing. I can not imagine how she gives these tours, several times per day, while so totally present with the severity of it all. We walked without hurry and her voice was an anchor. She always asked us if we had any questions after each stop. She looked steadily at each of us. After none of the stops did any of the twenty of us have a single question. I think we were all in some way trying to hold ourselves together. And as for the only, burning question “how?”, we knew she had no answer.

How did we let this happen?

I did not take a photo of that infamous gate. I barely took any photos at all. I didn’t glance at the gate as I passed under. Normally I would’ve wanted to see the craftsmanship because I know that a lot of time goes into forging metal into letters like that. A skilled hand is required. A knowing eye. But I didn’t want to see that level of skill used for something so cruel. I only understood that many days later though, had to stop and hold on to my breath as my stomach twisted at the grief and horror of knowing that such fine skills were used for something like that. It made me so very sad.

(As I am writing this, I googled: the sign was actually made by a prisoner, Jan Liwacz. He survived several concentration camps, lived to the age of 82 and remained an artisan blacksmith and teacher throughout his life.)

But the houses stood just the same as they did 80 years ago, just the same bricks that the prisoners would have seen every day. The sky grey, the wind chilly. The roads flattened by the many feet of tourists this time, who came here by choice. It is strange, placing your body in these historical places. It is surreal.

I had brought with me a bright blue marble, a piece of sky; I suspected I might need it. Throughout the visit I held on to the rock in my pocket, reminding myself to breathe. Reminding myself that I would cry later, and that now was the time to listen. I had it, but barely.

It was the hair. That’s when I lost it. I work with hair sometimes, it’s one of the most powerful spells. Receiving hair from loved ones is always an honour, and I cherish it. But this. The heaps and heaps of it. Two tonnes. I didn’t look at anyone, I don’t know if anyone else cried too, but I felt myself detach and fall out of myself for a moment and the tears would not stop and it took all of me to find my breath again. I didn’t know who to pray to, or how. I didn’t know what to hold. It is the worst thing I have ever seen, and will ever see. Nothing else will come close.

Nothing else will come close to this place. Having heard it all in school does not make a diffence; seeing it is still surreal. It is evil down to every last detail, every last trace. The isolation cells. The gas chambers. The countless shoes. The photographies. The wall. The ovens. The gold. The train tracks. The watch towers. The interrogations, the so called trials. The sheer size of Birkenau. Insurmountable amount of pain.
I wish nothing of it had ever happened.

…

And I don’t know what to do with this experience.
I bought a copy if Anne Franks diary and I’m reading it slowly.
I am making a bigger effort with my veganism; no one should be in a cage.

I am thinking of our ongoing mass extinction and ecocide. How will someone look back on all of this in 80 years?

I am slowly getting on with this grief, trying to hold the stories and do better in ways that I can. I am grateful for the work of the Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau. May we never forget our histories.

…

(This story told in pictures.)