Oswiecim

Going to Auschwitz was a bizarre experience. Auschwitz I is too pretty. I visited on a sunny day in september and it almst felt like walking around some kind of bungalowpark. Except of course for the wire and the watchtowers. Most of the buildings at Auschwitz I have become museums dedicated to a certain topic. The memory of rooms filled with hair, shoes and combs still make me shiver.

And Birkenau is Auschwitz as you know it from the movies. Walking to the end of the railwaytracks, standing over the remains of the crematoria, stepping into the sleepingshacks… it’s shocking to really come face to face with a bit of history that displays such mindless cruelty.

Sometimes you do not like what you see in the mirror. Sometimes you wish not being “human”. The same time you see wonders, hope, stamina.

This is a place, where you get the feeling what a huge concentration camp means. Praise God, that it is your choice if you would like to go here.

That was the place I understood, why could the German soldiers follow the commands they received. Jesus! They felt like somebody. They could rule life and death. This is so human, let’s confess it.

And that was the place where hope and beleives feed people’s dream that someday they will be free. And the wonder is, that a lot of them actually survived the camp and made a new life. It could be hard to reenter the life after the shock.

A really impressing sad place.

Oswiecim is the Polish name of Auschwitz.