A DAY TRIP TO AUSCHWITZ (PART TWO)

19-05-2007

Sixth former Janelle Romano from King Edward VI College in Stourbridge was among 190 West Midlands students who recently travelled to Auschwitz with the Holocaust Education Trust. She reflects on an unforgettable day.

The terrible truth, I reflected, when visiting both Auschwitz I and Auschwitz- Birkenau, was that it could all happen again.

The key components that had created the blackened gas chambers and misshapen barracks so many years ago are still evident within the society in which we dwell. Prejudice, intolerance, discrimination and horrific acts of persecution are found in schools, in places of work, in each moment. In each day.

As I walked, almost numbing myself to the realities of the terror that had occurred right beneath my feet, I realised that the very site knew this as well.

Yes, the birds have returned to Auschwitz and the crisp May day promised the gentle sway of trees and the sudden brilliance of the grass. But the whole place enveloped me in a sense of remembrance.

Auschwitz itself knew of the history it had forged. It knew of the evil that had resided there.

Death, cruel and desperate, whispered into our ears at every turn. It was there and then that I decided I could not be overcome by my deep sense of guilt; it must be outweighed by the conviction that this must not happen again. For those who do not remember the past, it seems, are bound to repeat its mistakes.

I had resolved to let the experience shape my emotions, although I sensed that grief for the loss of those who I could never know would be impossible to resist.

A corridor housing the shoes of a proportion of the possible two million and a half victims who perished in Auschwitz, a picture of a family - just like my own and the famous shooting wall, a bleak prospect of life at the camp; all bought tears to my eyes but there was a sense of anger that I could not shake.

I could never know these people, their wishes, the beauty of their lives, but I felt as if I was saying a much-needed goodbye. It was a goodbye to a group of people that I had needed to pay my respects to from the first day I had learned about the Holocaust.

Their tragedy, in so many ways, had illustrated to me, the idea that individuals could be cruel, bitter, twisted; yet their determination, throughout the dread, the separation and the eventuality, for so many, of death; had shown me that courage would lead many to bear witness later.

Courage, I felt, had ensured that those who died for an immoral cause would not have died in vain, and that the message could be passed on.

Was there hope at Auschwitz? I had wanted to get involved in the Lessons from Auschwitz project as a way for the present to remember the horrors of the past, and make a resolution of peace for the future.

I cannot deny that the realisation of the dark truth, that the only differences separating those who walked out of Auschwitz and those who perished behind the electrified fences were their beliefs, their religion, their choosing of the way they had lived; left me momentarily devoid of any sense of hope.

However, as Rabbi Marcus delivered a service to us all at the foot of the camp’s memorial statue, and the sun shone behind the trees, I wondered whether 60 years ago, someone facing death and indignity, had looked at the same trees and seen hope.

Hope in the life that surrounded the death. Hope in the thought that one day there might be a new beginning, without the horror of Auschwitz the Death Camp, rather Auschwitz the Memorial Site, where somebody had come to pay homage to the worthy and the innocent.

Hope that that very person would look towards those trees, light a candle, say a prayer and walk away from the notorious watchtower alive.

A final hope, that those who would leave that place of evil would tell their story, remembering the history that so many have denied, remembering why this happened and remembering to work towards a future without another Auschwitz, another Holocaust.

(Check out The Stirrer’s account of the same trip here - And to contact the Holocaust Educational Trust go to http://www.het.org.uk/)

The Stirrer's picture gallery - click here

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