As a part of the ‘Lessons from Auschwitz’ project, I was lucky enough to visit Auschwitz and Auschwitz II (Commonly known as Birkenau). This is only 8 pictures from the trip out of over 300, and I still find myself baffled at the precision of the whole scheme. Even looking through the pictures now I find more little details which I hadn’t noticed before, and I keep finding out more from the trip itself. It has taught me that even though over 11 million people were killed during the holocaust, each person had their own story and their own experience, and we should not treat the number as a collected amount, but as 11 million individuals each suffering different things. What shocked me the most was the sheer size of the camps. Auschwitz was large, but when we arrived at Birkenau I was astounded at the amount of land that was taken to slaughter innocent people, and, although we were only allowed into 3 barracks there, it really put the numbers into perspective.
We were told by our tour guide things that you wouldn’t perhaps learn in an average history lesson. For example, Hitler did not specifically say to gas the Jews. He simply said to get rid of them in any way, which explains the fact that he was never recorded to visit any of the camps established in any country. Although you see the pictures that I post, and you may see the pictures that others post on the internet, you don’t actually process it the way we did when we went on our trip. I was surprised that no one had cried in our trip, but I realised it was because our day was so packed that we didn’t have time to emotionally process what was going on. A few days afterwards people asked me what I thought about the trip, and I couldn’t reply as there was too much to put into words. I replied with what people expected me to reply; scary, insightful and dark. But there were so many more emotions such as fear and anger.
Bottom line is, if you do get an opportunity to visit Auschwitz or Birkenau (or both) it is definitely worth going, as those who do not learn history are condemned to repeat it.
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