Forever Changed

There are days in our lives that we remember forever. Ones that we can distinctly remember every aspect of.  In March of 2015, I witnessed something that completely changed the way I looked at the world forever.

It was raining that day, this seemed to be a common trend in the European weather. It was late March, yet it was about thirty-five degrees out. The sky was so dark, it seemed to hint at what was yet to come later in the day. Our bus strolled through the city of Lublin, Poland. The city was so quaint and beautiful. The thing about Europe is, the architecture is so incredible. Every building is vastly different and unique in its own unique way. Ten minutes later however, we were out of the city and then boom there it was.

Across the street, there were neighborhoods, businesses, and then there was Majdanek. The moment the bus door opened and our feet hit the gravel, this eerie  feeling crept upon me. I'd seen pictures of the camp in my Holocaust textbook before, but here I was face to face with the barbed wire, the watch towers, and the barracks. We finally entered the camp, and our first stop was the gas chamber. Our guide brought us to a room filled with shower heads. She then explained that everyone that was eventually gassed had to first take a shower. She then brought us through to the room where thousands were gassed and showed us where the Nazi Commanders would put the Zyklon B tablets into gas the victims. The worst part of the whole thing was that there was still blue residue on the walls from the gas. At this point there was no words or thoughts, just silence.

Once we exited the gas chamber, we made our way up to another barrack. I'll never forget the feeling I had when that door opened, just typing this brings back tears.  Right in front of me, thousands upon thousands of shoes, all so dirty and worn. They belonged to all of those that lost their lives. They ranged in different sizes, from adult shoes to little baby shoes. The part that hit me the most was the baby shoes.  They had murdered over a million of innocent children, but how? For the first time in the whole trip, I had to walk away from the tour. I couldn't do it emotionally; I was not the only one. As a matter of fact, many of my classmates, as well as myself, had to regroup outside. Little did we know that the worst was yet to come.

We made our way up to the crematorium. The ovens that I'd seen in so many Holocaust movies were right in front of me. Just knowing that thousands of people were put in those ovens made me sick to my stomach. I want you to just stop and think about it for a second. How could anyone in their right mind put another human being in an oven?  It felt like what I'd seen was a scene from a horror movie. The horrendous reality was this was real life. As we toured the camp more and more I realized that the scariest part about this camp was that it could have been fully up and operational in just 24 hours.

The tour was almost over, but our guide had insisted that we see one more site before we left. As we made our way past the barbed wire and watch towers we came to a place that overlooked the whole camp. There stood a large Mausoleum that had, "let our fate be a warning to you" written across the top.  Inside stacked pretty high was a pile of ashes from the victims. To the right lay, ditches that looked like mini hills.  Underneath the grass lay bodies from the mass executions that took place. In the far distance, we could see the city of Lublin all the apartment buildings and house. It was hard to comprehend how an atrocity happened so close to so many people yet none of them did anything about it.

The tour finally came to an end, but our teachers gave us some time to take it all in. As I sat on the steps of the memorial the wind seemed to blow some of the ash into my face. I cried harder on that step than I ever had in my eighteen years of living.  I felt so hopeless, all I wanted to do was go back in time and save all those innocent people. The harsh reality was, I couldn't. I learned that day that the world can be so beautiful sometimes but yet so cruel.




All these photographs were taken by myself. Unfortunately, they were taken on my old phone that can't connect to wi-fi so I took a picture of them, enjoy.

These photos are by my friend Hannah D'Amico, enjoy!