Poland

The Polish countryside is carpeted with thick, dark forests. I can almost imagine people hiding in them, I can almost see their faces between the trees.

In each small town, the smoke stacks and ornate churches are the prominent features.

Auschwitz. 7/5/11

I'm surprised that being at Auschwitz doesn't make people nicer. Tourists from all over the world are more pushy, loud, and obnoxious than usual. The lines are very long.

The place just looks like a museum. I feel uneasy about being here only because of the emotions the name Auschwitz elicits and not because of how it looks or smells or feels.

ARBEIT MACHT FREI

Jews made the sign. The B was installed upside down as a call for help; "something is wrong here," it says. It reminds me of the upside down "3" that was spray painted on the doorway to the third level of my freshman year dorm from the stairwell. That 3 always bothered me.

The only way to exit was through the chimney of the crematoriums.

We are given headphones. The tour guide's voice has a rapid pace and a thick Polish accent. "Here, the SS doctors conducted illegal medical experiments," she says as if on an infomercial. How does she do this every day?

"About 2,400,000 people were murdered in this camp. About 200,000 people survived."

Sometimes the train journey would last 7-10 days without food or water. At what point do you just want to die? How was the will to live so, so unthinkably strong? Is it human instinct to think that you will be the outlier? That if anyone can make it, it will be you?

What am I living for? Would my reasons pass the test?

I teared up just now, when I saw Josh sobbing at the sight of the confiscated talitot. Sometimes it takes seeing emotion in someone else to draw it out of myself.

The shoes aren't all the same black, dirty leather, flat sole I was expecting. There are all colors and fashions, sandals, heels, everything. I even thought, oh, those are cute.

A room of hair and make up brushes.

None of the signs have the correct apostrophes and it bothers me.

Before Auschwitz grew too large, prisoners were photographed, like a mug shot. And now we are looking into their eyes.

Their uniforms weren't warm enough for the winter.

They look like skeletons but with very, very sad facial expressions.

I've only been here an hour or so and I already feel myself shutting down. I can't open my mind up to the possibility of this tragedy. I can't accept that people were starved and tortured by the millions and stripped of all their possessions and family and dignity. I am standing on a street where people died of exhaustion and cold during unbearably long roll calls. How?

No one in the group is speaking. Besides when they're all asleep, this has never happened. They are comforting each other.

This really puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

The Standing Cell.

I don't understand how they thought up these punishments. I could never in a million years devise such horrors. If they wanted to kill people, why didn't they just do it? Why did they make them suffocate or drop dead from standing, exhaustion, starvation, cold disease, overcrowding..

Shiri told the story of her grandfather. He didn't have fingernails. He had burns on his body from a guard's cigarette.

Someone took a picture of us sitting as a group. We are a symbol here.

Scratch marks on the walls of the gas chamber, and a Magen David etched in the concrete wall too.

The crematorium ovens look like brick pizza ovens but they are long enough to accommodate bodies.

Birkenau.

They didn't just want to kill people, they wanted to terrorize people.

Yuval was holding his Tanach and I asked, what are you reading? I just want to hold it, he said.

Imagine getting elected on Hitler's platform, on the basis of exterminating an entire people.

The air here smells like it does at a track meet in May--cool, grassy, sunscreeny. We are holding water bottles and wearing sneakers. I'm ready for the triple jump.

The reconstructed barracks smell like musty wood and sunscreen too.

There is an endless expanse of brick chimneys left from when they hastily burned down the wood barracks to eliminate the evidence. It looks like a graveyard, or ancient ruins.

The Selection Process: which line would I be in?

I don't want to touch anything here. I wish I could hover from above so that not even my feet would have to make contact. Death is everywhere.

"It's very creepy to sleep next to dead bodies," Shlomo says about the barracks.

A main goal of the medical experiments was to find efficient ways to sterilize women. Ovaries were torn from their bodies without anesthesia.

Me: Everywhere I go, I keep taking pictures because I need to show my parents.

Matt: I need to show my children.

It's so peaceful here now. It's quiet except for feet shuffling on the gravel paths and the murmur of quiet voices. Birds are chirping and guides are giving tours in different languages. I am tired from walking all day. I'm also very calm. I am in such disbelief that the enormity of what happened here is not hitting me.

The grass is high. I'm worried about getting ticks. Is it wrong to complain now? After seeing this, how can I say- I'm cold, tired, hungry, or crowded? How can I say a room smells bad or my feet hurt or this food tastes terrible?

I brought 2.5 Minute Ride (by Lisa Kron) with me (thanks, Adina) and I'm reading it. I think I'll send Lisa Kron an email tonight (I did, she responded).

The ashes of the people who had been murdered were dumped on ponds and rivers and fields, as fertilizer.

After having their head shaved, starving, and wearing new ill fitting uniforms, people were often unrecognizable to close friends and family.

"I want to be remembered wearing a suit." --Andrew, pointing at a wall of pictures of Holocaust victims from before the Holocaust. There is a glamorous couple depicted, in a suit and a fancy dress. God knows what they looked like when they died. But I'll remember them looking like movie stars.

It's scary, but I sometimes wish we could simulate life in a camp for just one day. Just to get one iota of understanding. Because we can't imagine. We can't imagine what it was like to go to the bathroom where thousands had already gone, and only for a few seconds. Or to never feel warm during the winter, or to hear the last breath of the person sleeping next to you, or to live off 15o calories per day.

Why am I able to walk out of here? Why do I deserve to leave?