Walking through the main “Arbeit macht frei” gate of the notorious Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz, in Poland was for me the most powerful moment of our study tour thus far. Even as we had approached the camp that morning, driving through the short stretch of trees and grass that separated the place of terror from the surrounding Polish neighborhoods, I had not known quite what to expect from our trip there. I was thinking about the context of Poland’s new Holocaust laws, which ban open discussion of Polish collaboration or complicity in the events that took place at concentration and death camps across the nation. After all our discussion about this new law in class, and our introduction to a Polish guide and translator, I was mindful of how our tour of Auschwitz might be effected by such a law, and on high alert for moments when the implications of the new rules might be made apparent in the words of our guide. However, when our scheduled tour began and we rounded the corner, entering the enclosure of barbed wire and witnessing the infamous black metal gate before me, this issue was momentarily set aside under the immediacy of what I was seeing. Here was the path that millions once tread as they endured the deep evil and oppression of the Nazi regime. The majority of individuals who walked through those gates lost any chance of returning to the world beyond the barbed wire. Walking across the same soil years later was a chilling experience that is difficult now for me to put into words.
Main gate at Auschwitz I
Although we were only in Poland for a few days, the sites we saw there, particularly at the former concentration and death camp of Auschwitz/Birkenau, quickly became some of the most important and memorable. In the main camp, Auschwitz I, our class took a guided tour that led us through the barracks where prisoners had slept and washed, the courtyard where they had stood for hours during daily roll call, and the gallows and gas chambers where they had been murdered. In Birkenau, the adjoining death camp, we witnessed the ruins of the crematoriums and gas chambers abandoned by the Nazis in their retreat, and the memorial that has since been erected to commemorate the millions who lost their lives there during the years of the Holocaust. Seeing these sites firsthand was very poignant, adding new layers to my existing knowledge of the genocide. The Holocaust was no longer just a list of facts in my mind but fully materialized in front of me. I gained a more formidable understanding of the horrors of the concentration camps as I stared across former prisoner barracks now lined with photographs of the dead, and entered rooms filled with piles of dishes, shoes, suitcases, glasses, and human hair, remnants of those wiped out by the Nazis. The enormous loss of human life struck me as I envisioned the people behind those artifacts, the women, men and children who had carefully packed their suitcases full of personal valuables and boarded trains bound for death. After visiting the camps, these are images that I will forever hold in my mind.
In addition to the high emotion I experienced at Auschwitz, the visit also prompted me to consider the purpose of historical preservation and the ways that history can be effectively retold. Today, Auschwitz/Birkenau, once a mechanism of murder, is a popular tourist destination. Even with the structure of the guides, there were many who treated it as an attraction on the basest level. Before we had even entered the camp, I saw many individuals taking selfies and photographs of themselves by the gate and barbed wire. Later, despite a sign prompting silence, one school group spoke loudly and disrespectfully in the crematoriums. These instances of insensitivity made me reconsider the effectiveness of allowing public tours of a place like Auschwitz. Doing so seemed to open up the possibility of important sites being taken less seriously or being treated as bucket list checkmarks or photo ops for social media. This diminution takes away from the historical resonance and importance of the site, as well as creates a channel for disrespect toward an extremely sensitive topic.
Ruins of the crematorium at Birkenau
Despite these complications, my own experience at Auschwitz ultimately made me realize just how important it is to provide access to places like the concentration camps. Our guide emphasized the purpose of keeping Auschwitz open to the public as a way to preserve the truth of the past and carry its lessons forward toward a better future. The weight of this mission was something I felt deeply as entered the barracks at Auschwitz and walked alongside the railroad tracks at Birkenau. The narrative being told at the camps was highly controlled, aided by many photographs, statistics, and informative signs. In order to visit Auschwitz, it is also necessary to take a guided tour, a method that ensures that everyone is given access to the same structured narrative. This system helps to prompt tourists who come to Auschwitz to do so critically, engaging them in conversation guided by access to facts and information. There is an irrevocable chasm that can never fully be bridged between the Auschwitz prisoners who once were forced to be there and the millions who walk through the site today. Those who were not there cannot possibly understand fully what it was like to suffer the Holocaust. Visiting the camps, properly conducted, certainly makes the gap a little narrower, bringing into firmer reality the suffering that so many underwent during the war, and ensuring that the lessons of the tragedy endure well into the future.
Barbed wire surrounding the Auschwitz I camp