Comparing notes on a disaster.

Nothing moved on the day I went to Auschwitz. The pristine weather Poland in summer had offered the previous 3 days was swallowed by a colourless void of sky. The heat remained, but was now sourceless, the sky so full of clouds that it seemingly had none at all. It hung like a dull, recycled canvas. Even with the train carriage's window down, the air was stagnant, claustrophobic as the countryside passed by. I poured water down a throat that stubbornly remained dry.

My predominant emotion was apprehension. Visiting the grounds of Treblinka in December grated my emotions further every minute I was there, and that was without any remaining buildings on the grounds. How would I cope now with entering the very structures of a death factory? And Treblinka was something else Auschwitz was not. Silent. Secluded. In the three hours Corey Irwin and I were there, we saw maybe four other people on the grounds as well. I am forever listening, but Treblinka was quiet enough to hear. An imagination invites. Treblinka obliged. At Auschwitz there is not the retreat of creativity. Merely undeniable reality.

These bricks held screams. The bullet holes in concrete were made just after lives were ended. The two tons of human hair in the room before me- that was washed, cared for, fretted over. But then came Auschwitz. The endless piles of shoes, both adults' and children's..... those were purchased, polished, a source of delight, even brief, material pride. But then they stepped on the platform at Birkenau II. Individual tragedy on that scale is not something that the mind can digest fully. Honestly. It isn't. Even for me, who attended potentially the leading university for Holocaust study in America. I've eaten dozens of dinners with survivors, read reams of history and first-hand accounts, in Night and Fog seen the most graphic footage that exists on the camps. And still, when actually on the grounds, my intellect fails me.

Understanding is not found in the face of atrocity. Horror as confrontation is not horror as comprehension. Even if you succeed in part, begin to fathom what this place means, you are thrown off-balance, stopped once again. For there is laughter at Auschwitz. On the walk from the train station to the site, you pass a neighborhood, hung laundry drying, playgrounds in use. The three-kilometer gap between the camps? That's filled with houses, a lot of them, seemingly unaware they are entrenched between the echoes of the basest evil man is capable of. People eagerly pose for photos beneath the cruelly-worded gates ("Work Will Set You Free"). People want to remember that moment. I had a difficult time taking any photographs, had to force myself to so that I could reflect responsibly on the experience years from now. Inserting myself in such a setting for all time was not just unappealing, it would be sickening. A teenager stood in front of a maze of barbed wire that surrounded a watch tower and a sign that read "Halt" while miming the stance of an SS guard. He just barely held his laugh in long enough for his photo to be taken. That's what the compounds the horror of Auschwitz. We seriously don't fucking get it.

Elie Wiesel, the popular face and voice of the Holocaust survivor, spoke at my university, an incredibly rare honor I was privileged to attend. He discussed a thesis of re-interpretation regarding the myth of Pandora's Box, and how it relates to looking back on his experience after these many decades. Pandora disobeys Zeus, and in doing so unleashes all forms of plagues and evil throughout the world, dooming humanity to immeasurable misery. And at the very bottom of the vacated box, she sees the silver light of hope. We all sleep easier knowing we have this one gift to combat all our struggles. But Mr. Wiesel stressed the forgotten premise of the entire story, the one that shifts the paradigm. The box contains all the evils in the world that can torture us. And hope is in that box. So why should we view hope as anything other than the cruelest evil of all? The one deeper and more lasting than all the others....

During the speech at Chapman, it was a thesis I found clever, memorable, thought-provoking. At Auschwitz it was a thesis proven true. We proclaim "Never forget," vow "Never again." But this ignores the killing fields of Cambodia, the ethnic cleansing of the Balkans, the bloody rivers of Rwanda and Darfur. Even the most casual look at history exhibits that hope in the face of horror is at best proven moot. At worst, exposed for what it really is. This may not apply to the everyday life at home (I haven't grown that pessimistic), but for a few thousand acres of the Polish countryside and the hundreds of other places like it, a list expanding by the day, it is impossible to argue otherwise.

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(postscript) These are the emotions I feel right now, a time in my life unique in that I have just visited Auschwitz. But it is not a weight or depression that I will carry with me, so as my friends, don't worry. I realize how negative the above sounds, but I wanted to give you insight in to this moment, as well as reassurance that I will use this experience as something to learn from and grow. In short, I will bounce back. I have a tendency to do that.

Auschwitz and the rest of Poland:
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