A Sobering Visit to Auschwitz

DAY XI: KRAKOW

29.01.2011 - 29.01.2011 -6 °C

We spent today visiting Auschwits and the experience continues to be both shocking and sobering. We've reflected quite a bit on how far removed we are and how such atrocious happenings are completely foreign to us. Even after reading so much about the Holocaust and visiting this place where the vast majority of these horrible acts have happened, we were left without a true understanding of what has actually happened there. It all seems so foreign, perhaps because it hasn't happened so close to home. We couldn't begin to understand.

We're definitely still processing it all but continually return to making an attempt to understand human kind doing such things to one another- especially children and pregnant women. Life is so precious and sacred, and to treat people with such indifference and disrespect seems reciprocally hurtful and wrong.

It is all unfathomable as you are guided through recreations of the living quarters, barricades and stories of what has happened where and why. We can not begin to imagine the dehuminization felt by any one of these people or their family members or acquaintances that continue to carry this weight with them. We leave you with a few miscellaneous shots from our day trip.