As I roamed the empty halls of the blocks that once housed innocent people held captive for crimes against their differences in society, I noticed the uneven stairs, the chipped paint, the cold damp feeling that lingers in you even when you step into the warm sun. An eerie emptiness filled the silent hallways and the dirt paths. I wanted to just sit there and picture what it looked like with the people there, the SS soldiers and the heaviness that once roamed the grounds here.
I know weird to say that I wanted to know what it was like, but I wanted to get more than just a textbook answer I wanted to feel what the people were feeling within their very souls and to know that they still had hope. Hope that one day they would be in a better place, that the punishment for their “crimes” would cease to exists. That hope was keeping them alive among the evil that was holding them captive within the walls of Auschwitz.
Ask yourself, what type of hope would you have if you had to experience something like the death camps?
Yes I know its a morbid question, but sometimes within those questions we gain perspective. The new found perspective that I got while I was there was one that shook me. Thousands of steps taken by so many strangers yet I felt like I could see their shallow figures lurking through the paths, the bunks, the gas chamber.
My visit with death made me come to the realization that even when death may be at our door, where life is there is always hope. Hope in the future, hope that a newer brighter day will come, hope that the last setting sun will be the most beautiful one ever. Here is the awesome thing though, because I have the greatest hope of all inside of me, I always have life! Think about it for a moment folks, death couldn’t even contain our God!! He died for us to give us life and then to give us hope He rose!
I think that the men, women, and children brought to Auschwitz held onto the hope that they were still alive, that they could still be saved, and that even if they didn’t they knew that the one who died first to save them was waiting for them on the otherside with arms wide saying “Welcome home my child!”
