Beauty and A Beast

There is something so magical about Prague.  The castle that looks over the city seems as if it was taken right out of a fairytale.  This journey we were on was so emotionally draining.  One minute we're exploring beautiful European cities, the next we were learning about the hundreds of thousands of people that died in a city or at a camp because of one man and his regime.  That afternoon after we left the town of Lidice, we found ourselves back in the beautiful city of Prague.  We all had a lot on our minds, the bus ride home was filled with a lot of tears and journal logging to write down our immediate emotions, feelings and thoughts.

Our teachers gave us the early afternoon until late evening to explore the city by ourselves.  As we climbed the road to the castle, we found ourselves in front of two guards.  Of course, being from the selfie generation, all of my classmates and I took photos with guards.  Now, the thing is the guards aren’t suppose to laugh, but one of them did.  Inside the castle was spectacular.  The stained glasses windows were like none other that I’d ever seen.  It’s safe to say that I used half my memory card from my camera on that castle.  We then ate dinner in a cafe that looked over the city, walked over the Charles Bridge, got painted Easter eggs for our families and packed our suitcases for Poland.  

Our time in Prague was  incredibly way too short.  Yet, here I was again lugging my monstrous suitcase through the streets of Prague until we reached our bus.  We were onto the next venture, one step forward to living with our Polish students for a week.  That night we slept on an overnight train.  I was expecting it to be like something from the Polar Express, however with four girls in one train car and a monstrous suitcase, it was a sight to see.  Believe it or not, we all slept like babies that night and were woken up by the train whistle and the bright Polish sun.  We had breakfast on the train and then got a few hours of sleep on the bus before we came to our next location.

It felt like we were in a horror movie or a scary nightmare.  The woods looked like they went on forever and that there was no way out.  As our bus crept down the dirt roads the trees seemed to hover so high that no sunlight was able to sneak in.  It was dark, cold and rainy when we finally reached Treblinka.  Whether we were ready or not, it was time to see our first concentration camp in Poland, one that we would surely leave every one of my classmates and I in tears.

We were ready to see the camp along with the barbed wire and the train tracks, but as we approached, none of that was there.  There was not any barbed wire, no train tracks, no nothing.  As we walked into the museum, there were videos and memorabilia and then right in front of us stood a huge 3-D layout of the camp.  The strange thing was, when you looked outside none of that was there.  Were we even in the right place?

He had done it again.  Hitler had destroyed Treblinka,  He made it seem as if nothing had ever happened there.  As if 800,000 men, women and children didn’t lose their lives there.  What was remarkable was that somehow, there was still a large layout in the camp museum and it looked so accurate.  As we were walking through Treblinka, we were informed by our Polish tour guide Maria that those few that survived Treblinka were able to describe the layout of the camp and that was how the 3-D layout was created.  As we walked outside through the memorial, we learned that the pillars that went on for miles represented the train tracks.  After you follow the pillars you come to a mass grave with over 17,000 rocks.  In the center is a large tombstone that stands on top of where the gas chambers once stood.  Under all the stones are the ashes of 800,000 innocent people that lost their lives there.  As you walk past the stones, you see large pits that have more stones.  The pits were used by the Nazis to put dead bodies in. The stones represent exactly where those bodies would have lied.  Treblinka was a horrific place and we learned that once you entered, the odds of you coming out were slim to none.  

As the bus drove away, we were all numb, in shock.  There were no words, no thoughts, just tears.  There was one question though, how could someone get away with this and what was the rest of the world doing while these atrocities were taking place?

 

 Photos by Hannah D'Amico

Terblinka...