When anyone asks, it was terrible. A horrible, sad and awful reminder of the evil that can exist in the world.
There are so many emotions that run through your mind in that place. A place of torture, a place of death, a place of suffering and injustice like very few ever understand. The only way to attempt at sympathy, is imagining ourselves as the very people who were cursed to call the death camp their home, for however short a time. We imagine ourselves marching down the dirt and rocky paths, living in the horribly cold, wooden and dirty houses, sleeping 8 to a bed, if you were lucky enough to get a bed. Sick, diseased, and never fed or bathed, these people existed but didn’t really live.
And yet a part of my mind must distance myself from their tragedy. Though my heart wants to feel what they felt in order to know true compassion on their plight and injustice, I cannot live my life feeling trapped inside a concentration camp. I must choose to see that I am not imprisoned, I do not have to fight for survival, I am free and to imagine myself as anything other is a disgrace and dishonor to those whose freedom is tragically taken away.
It is important to remember these horrors of our history. It is the only way we can remember not to repeat them. We cannot hide the face of human evil from those who would rather ignorant bliss.
Yet, my heart was also drawn to the amount of life that continued to bustle within the walls of what has become a beacon of death & martyrdom. The birds chirping, the sun shining, the light breeze blowing across the fields of grass and flowers between the barracks that held poor and starved victims. This ugly paradox is the reality of our world.
A wonderful world, made for beauty and life, yet disfigured by our own human capacity for the tragic.
I cannot imagine what it would have been like, living in the ghettos of Krakow behind a thick wall that separates you from the rest of clean and well cared for society. I do not know what it feels like to be captured as an enemy of a country, placed in a war camp, or forced from my home to work tirelessly for nothing. I pray to never know what would come from living in a concentration camp, or being sent marching to my death without any crime other than existing.
I will never know how much FAITH it would take to survive Auschwitz.
Yet there were some that did. They had what it took, by the grace of The Lord and His unyielding love, they found a reason to rise each day, to see the birds and flowers around their living hell and believe that God had a REASON for their lives. The trusted, they fought in faith and they lived, regardless of their physical survival. The days spent were days lived with a Father who loved them and saw their plight. They believed in a greater hope, in a God who had already overcome.
A song my heart sang all throughout the Auschwitz I & II grounds, and all around the Krakow city area, so rich with history of WWII, is by Shane and Shane.
“Though You slay me, yet I will praise You.
Though You take from me, still I will bless Your name.
Though You RUIN me, still I will pray.
Sing a song, to the One who has OVERCOME.”
