On a gray and misty morning, my heart was broken and mended again on a long walk.

The air was thick and damp, heavy. The further I walked, the heavier I became.


This was Auschwitz.

A death camp where over 1.1 million people perished through no fault of their own.

From this “factory of death,” crumbling two hours outside of Krakow, Poland, three crematoriums, gas chambers, barracks, watch towers, and barbed wire fences remain.

The evil and hatred that once claimed this site is still palapable here. It’s alive even in death. The walls, the cobblestones, the towers, the gates, everything on the grounds is worn raw from the suffering of four years spent in hell.

Walking beneath the rusted entrance gate brandished with the words “Arbeit Macht Fret,” “Work Brings Freedom,” I can only imagine standing here 60 years earlier; staring at those scarring words overhead, hopeful I was being “resettled,” and holding on to a sliver of hope that I may one day be free.

Any able working person 13 years and older would have passed through here. The other 70 to 75 percent of people too old, young, or weak to work were killed upon arrival.

I am not the first 22-year-old girl to pass under these gates. I imagine tracing the steps of the girl walking here 60 years ago. Same steps, but different walks. My walk was a tour, hers was a march to death.

Only time made the difference.

We approached a gas chamber that doubled as a crematorium, and as we filed through in a single line, I flashed to the time when those who walked in to this cold and gray crumbling coffin would never come out. Yet I did.

Only time made the difference.

Kicking my feet through the dust, shuffling from barrack to watchtower in the gray drizzle, watching the dark fragments settle on the earth, I wondered if there were human remains still among the ruins.

Ashes from dead prisoners were used as fertilizer on the grounds.

I scanned the rooms within the retired prisoner cell blocks that held saved artifacts from the camp. Two tons of prisoners’ hair, only a fraction of the true amount collected by the Nazis, lie in dusty tangled heaps beyond the glass.

Hair was used to make cloth.

My nails scratch along the thick window panes which hold the confiscated suitcases, baby shoes, eyeglasses, brushes, and other personal belongings of prisoners.

These are real things. These were real people. This really happened…here.

Yet I come out the other side.

All because of time.

It is time that has caused us to realize what we’ve done to each other. Time that’s allowed us to preserve this part of history. And through time, we can only learn to not repeat our past.

The Bug Necessities: What to pack for your own European Adventure
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