Visit Auschwitz

“At the entrance was where bodies were displayed to serve as an example to others. You continue on to block 10, where Dr. Josef Mengele carried out his human experiments on the healthy women who arrived at the camp. Between the tenth and eleventh block is the death wall, where prisoners were lined up before the firing squad. Walking by the wall broke me down into sobs. Though impossible to imagine, the fact that you are standing there, exactly where it all happened, staring into the bleak, rudimentary wall against which so many were murdered in such a brutally cruel way, is enough to move you to tears.”

“On my first visit to the camp, I booked a small group tour, where I was the only Jewish person, and though the people around me did nothing wrong, I could not help but feel uncomfortable, and even a bit upset, by their presence, though I understood them and was glad they were visiting and learning about what had happened at this place. [...] Likewise, it was an uncomfortable feeling to walk through a tourist entrance and visitor information center at the same spot that I would have been shoved into the camp, torn from my family.”

“The day that I visited, though a bit wet from the rain the night before, was bright and sunny, so bright and sunny and warm, in fact, that it seemed wrong. In media sites of horror and death are portrayed as being under a perpetual ominous grey sky, but even Auschwitz-Birkenau had its sunny days. And even blue skies did not do anything to brighten the mood.”