I didn’t know how I’d feel being at Auschwitz. I expected despair and depression, anguish and anger, something dramatic, something intense. Numb and confused weren’t even on my radar screen, but afterwards those were the only emotions I could put a name to.
Throughout our trip to Eastern Europe, the impending visit to Auschwitz loomed. I dreaded it. But this was a Jewish roots trip and Auschwitz was essential — to smell the air, see the bunkers, gas chambers and crematoriums, to bear witness, pay tribute, bring a reality to the incomprehensible.
Poland felt like hostile territory to me. Not only is it the home of Auschwitz, but it has a reputation as anti-Semitic, with its once-thriving Jewish population now reduced to a few thousand. I eyed strangers suspiciously and thought about suggesting that my daughter take off her Jewish star. Maybe even now, it wasn’t safe to be so openly Jewish.
We left the hotel early for the hour-plus drive from Krakow to Auschwitz.
Forty-five minutes into the trip I realized we were driving in circles, returning to the same detour sign.
A busload of Jews who couldn’t find Auschwitz. The irony was staggering.
“Could someone tell us what’s going on?” I called from my seat in the back.
“Mom,” Morgan snapped. “We’re lost.”
I knew that. I knew that our driver was doing his best, but I couldn’t help myself. I felt anxious and trapped, haunted by the thought of other Jewish mothers with their children, feeling the same things on these very same roads. For them this had been a one-way trip.
Part of me hoped we were irretrievably lost and would have to abandon the trip. But eventually we found it.
Seeing the wrought iron canopy bearing the words “Arbeit Macht Frei” — work will make you free — made me weak and shaky. I took Morgan’s hand. Another woman dripped Rescue Remedy, a homeopathic concoction to sooth the nerves, under her tongue.
Our tour guide was a Polish Catholic woman in her early 40s. She seemed nice enough, but I wondered.
Near the entrance she pointed out a 5-foot area punctuated by guard towers and bordered by barbed-wire fences.
“This is no-man’s land,” she said. “Prisoners caught here were shot. For killing a Jew, guards were rewarded with extra rations and a couple days’ leave.”
The Nazis were merciless. Entire families were killed if any one of them aided a Jew. She told us how, after one escape attempt, 200 Polish villagers were brought to Auschwitz and murdered. When the prisoner was recaptured, he had talked. Those arrested had either helped or failed to turn him in.
We walked through bunkers lined with photographs of prisoners with names, date of arrival at Auschwitz and date of death; most dates were separated by only a few weeks. Massive display cases held mounds of eyeglasses, suitcases, hairbrushes, shoes and artificial limbs — personal effects confiscated by the Nazis, sorted but then abandoned when they fled. Even more items had been burned by the Germans in an attempt to destroy evidence of their crimes.
“The Nazis were very efficient,” our guide said. “Nothing went to waste.”
There were piles of human hair and bolts of fabric it had been woven into, earmarked to make uniforms.
The horror of what I was seeing was incomprehensible, the magnitude overwhelming. I shut down.
“Millions were killed for one reason,” our guide said passionately, “because they were Jewish. All this, and some people still deny that there was a Holocaust.”
But, I wondered, what about her? What about her family?
“This is where my uncle died,” she said, indicating a small, brick, windowless torture cell. He was one of those 200 villagers charged with helping a Jew escape.
For the first time that day, I cried.
Would I have been willing to risk everything to save a stranger? Or would I have named names hoping to save myself? I wondered why one death moved me in a way that millions hadn’t. I thought about the people on the street I had eyed so suspiciously and wondered what their stories really were.
I felt brave, fuller for having made this trip. But I was relieved the day was over.
“We’ll never have to do this again,” I said, pulling Morgan close to me.