Auschwitz and Birkenau: Those Who Came Before

by Tasha in Europe

Today was a heavy day.

There are some days when you travel, and you are in transit for 48 hours straight and you haven't showered and you feel absolutely terrible. This wasn't one of those days.

This was a heavy day.

There is hardly a person on earth who does not know, to some extent, that concentration camps existed during World War Two. Some of those people, are aware that most of them were in Poland. And some unlucky few, such as myself, are well versed on the happenings within the barbed wire fences.

This was a day I wished I wasn't so well versed.

I have always believed that the past deserves to be remembered. The biggest disservice we can do to those who were murdered in hatred and fear, is to forget. Their stories, and their pain, deserves to be known and remembered.

I still believe that.

If the only comfort we can provide to those who passed in such places as Birkenau and Auschwitz is to ensure that their story is known and not to forget them as actual people, we owe them that.

The most confronting element of these camps is the businesslike detachment and horrifying efficiency in which those involved carried out their tasks. The converted Auschwitz I - now a museum - hides rooms upon rooms filled with decaying luggage, mountains of spectacles, walls lined with prosthetics and most horrifyingly - two tonnes of human hair, found waiting to be exported to textile mills.

This is a heavy place. And it should be heavy.

This story should weigh you down. It should make you angry. Make you want to crawl into a ball and weep. It does all of these things, while continually confronting you with the underlying truth of the Holocaust.

These are real people. This really happened. This keeps on happening.
 
And somehow, we continue to make the same mistakes as the past - and stand idly by.

This is heavy. And we should not forget it.

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