The day I spent at the former Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland was an emotional experience that began even before the group’s bus arrived at the site. As a lifelong Jew and recent student of WII, I knew that the tour would be harrowing but had no way to truly prepare for the four-hour visit. Staring outside the bus window at the massive forests leading up the complex, all I could think about was the experience of my fellow Jews, who went to the camp under very different conditions eighty years ago. Unlike them, I had a choice. They were forcibly crammed into a tight train car with hundreds of other people for days; I was scrolling on my phone and sipping on clean water comfortably reclined in the upholstered seat.
This deep contrast colored the entire experience. The tour guide brought us through the barracks, sleeping quarters, and holding cells while reiterating the litany of Nazi atrocities committed on the ground where we stood. While I gained a holistic view of the main camp, many victims only saw a few of those buildings for their entire dismal stay before perishing from disease, infection, starvation, or direct violence. Most of the Jewish victims only saw one structure: a gas chamber. As I walked through one, I pictured myself stripped down and bald: a Holocaust victim being ushered to their death. Tears rushed down my face, and I glared up toward the holes where Nazis dropped Zyklon B (the poisonous gas used in the chambers) on the unsuspecting victims. Then, in bittersweet victory, I left the room. Unlike any Jew 80 years ago, my feet carried me through an open door, and I took a breath of fresh air. I silently thanked God for the first time in years. Six million died, but I was still standing happy, healthy, and very much alive. The now long-gone Nazi Reich systemically exterminated a third of the Jewish population, yet my Jewish friends, my Jewish family, and my Jewish self are still here.