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As we walked through the various rooms of the millions of amassed possessions taken from the Jews upon entering Auschwitz, it was haunting to see the relics representing the lives of so many who tried to help prepare for their tomorrow by bringing kitchen utensils and pots and pans. Our story-teller told us how she has the same spoon for hot chocolate as the one we saw displayed. She explained the haunting parallel of how the owner of said spoon probably brought it with them to Auschwitz, intending it for making their child happy in trying to make the best of their tomorrow that sadly was taken from them and millions of others.

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Today we visited the biggest extermination camp where most of the Jewish population died, Auschwitz-Birkenau. The whole camp could kill 12,000 people per day and the killings would be going on every. As we entered the gas chamber 1, you could feel the hollow and emptiness, your body tenses. Thousands and thousands of people died here, suffocating for 20 minutes to their death. Sources say that after all the people would be killed, a pyramid would be found everytime because the strongest would try to reach the top and weakest like the babies would be stepped on in the bottom. It was a cruel way to die and Nazi were happy to use this inhumane method of extermination. In the image you can a whole on the top left corner, this is where the Cyclone B was dumped and with 39 Celcius room temperature, it would turn into poisonous gas. Walking through the walls and smelling the distict odor the room has made ponder voices of people shouting in pain. (This only gas chamber that was not bombed by the Germans to hide the evidence of their actions to the Jews.)

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Walking into this long corridor of old shoes made my knees weak. Seeing this one red vibrant shoe juxtaposed with the dark ashy colored shoes, to me was a symbol of the hope and faith or the strong will many had to fight through the struggles they faced in the camp even though it was a death factory and the odds were not in their favor. Mr. Barmore had told a story of a man who grabbed on to the barbed wired fence to end his own life. I asked myself, why was this not a more frequent event? Why did this not happen to most of them? They knew they were at the camp to die, they did not know when or if they were gonna be liberated and they certainly did not know whether there would be a tomorrow or not, so why not choose the easier path to death? The less painful one and the quicker one also. The hope, faith, and strong will most of these people had blew me away.

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Walking around Auschwitz and Birkenau today, I realized something I never expected to or wanted to realize: the Holocaust was just another piece of Jewish history. We've been targeted time and time again throughout history whether it was by the Romans, the Egyptians, the Germans, etc. But the Holocaust is simply a repeat of the past with the added use of technological advances. It was an industrial murder. If the industrial revolution took place before the story of Purim, who's to say that Haman wouldn't have tried developing a gas chamber to speed up he process he had planned for the gallows? It's painful to say, but I do feel that one day, the Holocaust will be remembered as just "another time people tried killing off the Jewish race" and history is bound to repeat itself. The Holocaust is too recent to be just another piece of the past for the time being, but it's bound to happen, but worse as technology continues to advance. Above all else, that is what Auschwitz and Birkenau taught me today.

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Today in visiting Auschwitz we came across an exhibit of shoe polish which people had packed when coming to the concentration camp. These people came to Auschwitz with no idea of what they were walking into. They were preparing to keep their shoes clean and look nice for the next day but for many of these people there was no tomorrow.

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Words cannot fully describe how I felt walking through Auschwitz today. One thing that really moved me was looking through the list of names of victims and finding about 2-3 pages with people that shared that last name as me. It was extremely emotional for me because I could've been related to any one of these people that suffered during this Holocaust and just makes it that much more personal for me.

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Mr. Barmore said, "We should all be afraid of what we can do under certain circumstances". This really struck me because of its validity. To better explain this, Mr. Barmore told the story of a man whose only job was to press a button that opened a gate to let the cattle cars into Auschwitz. This man denied that he participated in the killing of the Jews because all he did was "press the button". However, with modern murder, technology offers the possiblity for the perpetrator to compartmentalize his actions and those of others and be able to say "it wasn't me". This is important to understand because one has no idea how they would act in those situations. What also stayed with me is when Mr. Barmore mentioned that some turned into beasts while others turned into angels.

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We saw three photographs in the exhibit created by survivors in Auschwitz I that were taken by the Sonderkommando, the Jewish inmates who worked in the death camp at Birkenau, forced to lead their own people to the gas chambers. I think the position of the Sonderkommando really shows the complexity of what allowed the Holocaust to happen, something that seems impossible to ever fully comprehend. No person would willingly put others to death, especially when they know that they will soon share the same fate of a slow death in the gas chambers. The responsibility then shifts to the Nazis and those who cooperated with them, but today Shalmi told us about someone he interviewed who pressed the buttons to change the train tracks outside Auschwitz to direct the cattle cars of Jews toward the camp. This man did not blame himself even though he knew what was happening, he said all he did was control the trains. The same idea can apply to all those who we classify as perpetrators- just individuals who did what they were told to do, each playing a relatively minor role in the grand scope of the Holocaust. Since there were so many perpetrators, it is difficult to find someone to blame, making a thorough comprehension of the causes of the Holocaust impossible. The vast number of perpetrators also stresses how anyone is capable of being a perpetrator, especially since in modern warfare technology allows for people to participate in mass slaughter while having minimal contact with the victims. It shows how none of us can absolve ourselves from
blame or tell ourselves that we would not have participated given the circumstances, because so many people, all formerly normal human beings, found it so easy to reject all morality and play an active role in the slaughter of millions of innocent people.

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Reflecting back on our visit to the concentration camp, Auschwitz Birkenau, I notice that there is so much detail that any textbook could give about this place. Auschwitz was chosen to be the place that killed the jews of western countries, and now can be considered the largest grave without headstones. My thought process of trying to comprehend the Holocaust has lead me to truly accept the fact that it happened and the reality of it; however, with that being said, more questions were developed. When looking at the picture below, I understand that the Jews were unloaded out of the trains and then segregated according to gender, but why were the men dressed in uniform allowed to determine their fate? When you see a individual in uniform, I would anticipate the respect and honor this person brings. But I know now that this were not ordinary men; these were men chosen to perform their duties as Nazi soldiers -- the duty of performing inhumane acts of injustice based on racist propaganda. Although the Holocaust happened over 70 years ago, the evidence that was left behind and the stories of survivors makes this event unbelievable.

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When we first arrived at Auschwitz we met our "story teller", a lady who would take us on a tour of the camp. One of the first things she asked us was how many of us wore glasses or contacts, and about 10 of us raised our hand. She then explained that the people who raised their hands, including me, would have been one of the people sent to the camp early on; this was not because of disability, it was because those glasses make a person look smart, and superior, and the Germans did not want that because they wished to eliminate the Polish intelligentsia to prevent dissent during the occupation. It was surprising to think that half of our group would be one of the first people sent away. When we got to this casing of all the glasses that were left behind by the victims, it really struck me how many their actually were.  I also thought about the fact that if I was actually in this position, I would've had such a problem getting around once they took my glasses away. It's terrible that something we take for granted could've cost someone their life.

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These containers of the gas with a murder count of over 1.1 million, rests here empty, and as a marker of what once occurred. Those men, women, and children that faced it's deadly effects never knew that tomorrow was not there for them and faced the truth of man when faced with certain circumstances.

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Today during our visit to Auschwitz we came across a room filled entirely of pages. This book, as seen in the picture, lists the names of all 6 million Jews lost during the Holocaust. For many, this book is the only trace of their existence; a majority are left without graves or tombstones. The Nazi regime sought to annihilate the Jews and strip of them of their identity. This book shows that despite their best efforts, the names of the lost Jews will be forever remembered in history.