Auschwitz. Somewhere I never thought I would be able to visit at such a young age. I had been to Dachau about five years ago, but what I felt was nothing compared to what I felt today. Other had asked me what it would feel like to go to a concentration camp and I wasn’t quite sure how to describe it. “You read and learn about everything that happened there, you can watch movies and documentaries about it, too. Nothing will be able to compare to being there in person though. You get to stand where they stood, but then you get to leave.” I would answer.
I wasn’t quite ready for what Auschwitz had in store for me today though. Dachau was powerful, yes, but it wasn’t a death camp. People were not sent there specifically to be killer moments after they arrived. They were at Auschwitz. It didn’t really hit me until we walked past all of the hair though. Seeing the pile of dark hair got to me. Hair is generally pretty thin, so the fact that it was about two tons of seven found on site was truly horrifying for me. What made it worse for me was the few strands of blonde that I saw. It looked like my hair, and that was all I could think about for awhile. – Emily
After performing in numerous Holocaust productions, I thought I was going to be prepared for what Auschwitz-Birkenau would be like. I was wrong. Walking through the lanes all I could focus on were the guard stations, positioned specifically so that there was no place to hide, no place to run. I found one spot in the entire camp of Auschwitz that someone could feasibly protect themselves from gunfire. It was terrifying. The worst of all for me was anything regarding children. Their shoes, clothing, pictures of them walking hand in hand, skipping to their deaths… it was too much for me. I also found myself putting myself into the prisoners shoes. (As an actress I always try to think about why would I do this, what if this happened to me) The sheer amount of fear that gripped me was enough to make me immediately want to call my mother and curl up into a ball. I don’t think I would ever be able to survive and keep the will to live in me. I would be too scared. This was also a personal trip regarding St. Maximilian Kolbe. I had done a research done t on him in middle school, and seeing where he was captive in a cell, where he sacrificed his own life for a stranger… that was such a special moment for me. I couldn’t take a picture of his cell, but I could leave a stone, just to know that he was there.
When moving to Bikernau, the sheer size of the camp took my breath away. The open space meant that the wind was fiercer than ever before. The living conditions here were horrifying. I don’t think I’d ever think of Auschwitz as welcoming, but in that moment I would have given anything to be back in the barracks with light, heating, and more space. The efficiency of the Nazis is so bone chilling, and I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to forget theses camps for the rest of my life. – Katie
“Six million of our people live in our hearts. We are their eyes that remember. We are their voice that cries out. The dreadful scenes flow from their dead eyes to our open ones. And those scenes will be remembered exactly as they happened.”-Shimon Peres
We go to see Auschwitz to see that no one is immune to tragedies like the Holocaust. As a communications class we go there to be able to communicate these tragedies first hand to our descendants. We go for the first hand experiences that we can tell our children and grandchildren so that the Holocaust is never forgotten. Never able to disappear and be forgotten. We go to visit the camps to know what it was like to be a prisoner, although we cannot truly experience it. To make sure that it does not happen again.
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”-Mark Twain
Although there are multiple tragedies of Genocide and ethnic cleansing happening and more that will eventually come, the more people that understand what happened in the past, the less likely it will happen again in the future. It is or job in communications to be able to see these horrific events as they are happening. To call out that this has happened before, to report and scream until something is done. Communications and Theater are alike in that it is our job to tell the story. As storytellers numbers may not mean as much, but when we know the story, we can connect on basic human emotions. We can explain in ways that without being at the camps in person would not have been possible. That is why we go as a communications course. We keep the story alive.
-Katie and Emily
Kat & Em Take on Gutenberg 