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Michael Davidoff
 Today was probably the most impactful day on this trip. Going through Auschwitz-Birkenau and seeing the two camps (Auschwitz I and II), as an individual,    made me realize that everybody takes advantage of what they have. Auschwitz is where the mass-murder of Jews were taken and where Jews were forced into concentration camps designed to decimate the Jewish population. In these camps, something that really stood out was that people in these camps were always hungry. Starvation in these camps were probably the number one cause that a lot of prisoners to die. Prisoners were eating less then 1000 calories a day while laboring all day long. This stood out to me because everybody that’s has everything and complain they are hungry every time, they take advantage of what they have and don’t realize that people around the world today and also back then in the Holocaust where people were working and still had little to no food. Walking through Auschwitz-Birkenau was very emotional, experiencing and seeing where the Jews were kept, labored, and killed. It was hard to knowledge and to understand, but being there gave me a better understand of what happened and how the Jews were 
uffering while being at those cam

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Today was probably one of the hardest day of this whole trip. Today we went to Auschwitz-Birkenau. What really surprised was the size of Birkenau it was huge and I couldn’t imagine how many innocent people were in there. What really stuck with was when Mr. Barmore talked about the kid and the father and how the kid yelled out to god to why his father’s beard was shaved off and the father smacked him and didn’t talk to him until he died and now to this day he lost his faith. That really stuck with me in a way I can’t discribe.

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Today was probably one of the most important days I’ve ever had. I’m still not quite sure what to say in this entry because a day later, I still haven’t been able to gather many cohesive thoughts. Walking through Auschwitz was mind blowing and sureal. I think the one thing that I can get across in words is that it was such a beautiful place to be in, but so many awful awful things took place there. Seeing all the possessions that people once had like shoes, pots, brushes, and even hair, hurt my heart the most. These are all the things that give a person dignity and whole, and the Holocaust took it all away from them and that is so sad. I don’t think it has hit me yet, all the emotions.

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Today was probably the most impactful day on this trip. Going through Auschwitz-Birkenau and seeing the two camps (Auschwitz I and II), as an individual,    made me realize that everybody takes advantage of what they have. Auschwitz is where the mass-murder of Jews were taken and where Jews were forced into concentration camps designed to decimate the Jewish population. In these camps, something that really stood out was that people in these camps were always hungry. Starvation in these camps were probably the number one cause that a lot of prisoners to die. Prisoners were eating less then 1000 calories a day while laboring all day long. This stood out to me because everybody that’s has everything and complain they are hungry every time, they take advantage of what they have and don’t realize that people around the world today and also back then in the Holocaust where people were working and still had little to no food. Walking through Auschwitz-Birkenau was very emotional, experiencing and seeing where the Jews were kept, labored, and killed. It was hard to knowledge and to understand, but being there gave me a better understand of what happened and how the Jews were suffering while being at those camps.

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I never thought that I’d have the chance to walk through Auschwitz and Birkenau let alone attend such an incredible trip as this, yet this morning we woke up around 6:00 to drive to Auschwitz before the masses, although there were still many people already there when we arrived around 8:30. Before we entered both Auschwitz and Birkenau, Mr. Barmore addressed the question of knowledge versus understanding, and the fact that we may see structures in the camps and know their history but we may never quite fully understand them. Walking through Auschwitz and the several exhibitions that are set up in what used to be barracks, we saw the pots and pans, shoes, combs, clothes, luggage and hair that once belonged to the Jews that were transported to Auschwitz and because of the knowledge of the Holocaust and WWII that we’ve gained from this trip, we had a much better understanding of the significance of every single item. We also walked through a dark room with projections on the walls that showed us videos of Jewish people living happily before the war. These movies and the music that accompanied them struck me before any though of what would happen to them had reached me. Another room that we entered later displayed pictures of some of the victims of the Holocaust after they’d been killed. As I stared at a picture of a skeleton-like corpse laying in the dirt along side many others, I couldn’t help but ask who this person was, who their family and friends were, and what their last thoughts were. I realize now that this was one of the first times I’ve sat and asked such questions, and that times before when I’ve seen photographs of corpses I didn’t think as much. A lot of the time when kids are taught about the Holocaust (or at least when I was), they are shown numbers more than photographs such as the ones we saw today, and numbers create less of an emotional impact that is so necessary. While there is no way to fully understand the magnitude of what occurred behind the gates of Auschwitz and Birkenau, the most we can do is continue to educate ourselves and others.

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Today we went to Auschwitz, and there’s so many stories that relate to everything we’ve ever talked about from the time we were kids reading Anne Frank to now taking a Holocaust class. The stories of heartbreak at the selection station, to the destruction of families who’ve managed to somehow stay together. Growing up you hear the numbers of how many people died during the holocaust but when you see the numbers for yourself with a two ton pile of hair that covers an entire room it’s startling, especially since that’s not even half of the amount of hair the allies found there during the liberation of the camp. The stories of people keeping faith even through their unimaginable struggles doesn’t sink in until you see the containers of shoe polish next to a room filled up to the top on both side of shoes that were taken off five minutes before they died. The shoe polish may not seem like much at first, until you realize that meant that the people who died truly believed they would live long enough to have to clean their shoes. Most of the time they didn’t even live long enough to go to the bathroom in the camp let alone dirty their shoes. At the selection millions of people’s lives would be changed forever. It’s impossible to not feel anything but heartbreak hearing the haunting stories of parents being forced to leave their children either to die by themselves or having to shove them away to keep them alive while knowing that would be the last time they could ever see their kids. Even worse, if your family would be lucky enough to stay together past the selection you would have to see each other get weaker and weaker everyday and know you can’t do anything while your only family left in the world dies leaving you alone, making you lose your will to live as well. Even after learning about all of this what sticks with me and what I think will always stick with me is the simplicity of it all. Mr. Barmore puts it perfectly when he says that we went to a death factory. They took innocent people from their homes and moved them like an assembly line through the camp and gassed them, burned them, and disposed of them, about 12,000 a day, like it was nothing. Only reason the number isn’t bigger is because of how long it took to cremate the bodies. Walking into the last exhibit we went to in Auschwitz-Birkenau I was able to walk around and look at the pictures people brought with them and I could read about a few of the victims and their lives. As I looked at the pictures I was able to see the person’s most important people, moments, and values in their lives. It’s impossible to see the numbers and just see numbers, not the people anymore. 3,500,000 people isn’t just a number. After walking around Auschwitz and hearing only a small fraction of the stories that’s happened there. I can only see it as millions of families that were destroyed and can never be repaired.

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Today while visiting Aushwitz- Birkenau we got a sense of what the camp’s history really was. In school if you learn about Aushwitz it probably won’t have a huge affect on you but, when you are standing there looking at the place that these people had to survive in it can get to you and teach you a bigger lesson. As we walked around the camp you could just feel the depressing feel that the camp gave off to everyone. The hardest part for me was visiting the gas chambers and knowing how many people lost their lives because of it.

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For me, one of the most poignant things from today was visiting the various rooms in Auschwitz that have been filled with the personal items and belongings of those murdered in the camp. We saw a couple of different collections of items, burn the one that stood out the most to me was the room filled with piles and piles of hair that was shaved off of Jewish women after they were killed in the gas chambers to be sold for Nazi profit. Seeing the sheer magnitude of hair in the room was both shocking and horrifying. I couldn’t believe how much hair there was; I’ve never seen anything like that before in my entire life. I personally found the hair much human and emotional than the collection of shoes or pottery. Additionally, it struck me that in not only today’s society, but hair in most cultures is a symbol of female beauty, a facet

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Today while visiting Auschwitz-birkenau I noticed something that really hit home. Marian Jaszczuk was a holocaust prisoner . He was a young male that went through the camps at only 16 years old and had been dealt such a life that most couldn’t bare at that age. This touched home because he is the same age as me and it’s just crazy to see the difference. My life I was never confined as a prisoner, starved, beaten, or abused in general. I didn’t have to deal with the constant pain of hunger or worry about when it would be my time to die. I am blessed to be able to grow up and experience the future knowing whatever is in store for me has a high chance of being something positive. Yet he didn’t. Marian spent a little over a year at Auschwitz going through these terrible conditions knowing he likely won’t be able to make it to adulthood and that the rest of his life could be a prisoner at this camp

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Walking through the Auschwitz-Birkenau and I felt an emotion I have never felt before in my life. It was sad like a remorse but also a sense of pride while walking throuout the camp. I felt vulnerable but I also felt a sense of security. As I was walking around the camp there was grass everywhere and it was very peaceful, but going to a place like that with the past that it had you would expect something more dark and barren but that was not the case. I knew that over one million people died there but it was very hard to understand the magnitude of that number and the amount of lives that were lost there. After being able to go there and see with my own eyes the size of the camp I was able to that the only purpose of that camp was to kill. Kill innocent people who just had a different belief than the people in power and calling all of the shots. I saw what different methods they used to dehumanize the people in the camp and how they made you feel almost worthless and that was the goal.

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Today we visited Auschwitz I and II (Birkenau) and I truly realized the truth about the situation. Visiting these sights made me realize the immense amount of lives lost in the extermination camps. Auschwitz I had a gas chamber and cremation area still intact. These areas were the first time in this trip that it hit me where I was. I understood people lost their lives, but knowing the background of these camps made it harder to grasp the atrocities. When we were by the gas chambers in Birkenau, Mr Barmar told us a story about a father and son that worked together in the camp. The son questioned God asking why he was letting this happen. The father stopped talking to the son and after about two months died without saying a word to the son. The father still had faith after everything that happened in a higher power. It was very hard to hear stories like this knowing the outcome that was most likely to come for all of those involved. Auschwitz was an eye opening experience for me because it helped show the vastness of the situation in these camps.

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When we walked through Birkenau, we paused and stood where the selections took place. Here, Mr. Barmore started telling stories of families getting separated or trying their best to stick together. The fact that many of the prisoners had no idea what was going on made the situation so much worse. For example, the one story he told us was about a young man who yelled to his mother and sister that he hoped they’d die because he thought they were angry with him when his mom pushed him out of the line that was heading towards the gas chambers. It wasn’t until a couple hours later when they had already lost their lives that he realized what his mother had done for him and what had happened. It’s just difficult to think about how easily the Nazis ripped families apart and never showed any remorse for doing so.

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I figured today would be the day that I could have a great sense of emotion and empathy for the atrocities of the Holocaust. Visiting hell on Earth, Auschwitz-Birkenau. Yet, I still found myself struggling to do so. How could anyone relate to what transpired here? Who am I to say that I understand what these people went through? The magnitude of despair and horror is not relatable to my life whatsoever. However, seeing the seemingly limitless masses of hair, shoes, kitchen supplies, glasses, luggage, and names, helped me put people behind the numbers everyone sees or hears. And just thinking that where I was standing, was where an SS officer, or prisoner stayed was a feeling like no other. Reading about these sites and actually visiting the sites are two completely different realms of understanding. You cannot just simply read about it in a textbook to understand the significance of these places, you need to step on the jagged rocks, smell the wood of the barracks, touch the barbed wire, and look out in the distance to see what freedom could have been, to get a better understanding. I was used to walking far distances, so what lacked in physical exhaustion, was replaced by emotional exhaustion. Nothing could ever relate to what happened there, the circumstances will never be the same.

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Visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau was definitely a painful, yet very informative experience. It was all very surreal to just imagine what horrors had occurred in the very spot I was standing. It was not so much the sites that got to me, it was the stories that went with it. Before we entered the infamous gate, our guide showed us a picture taken during the war and we could see a man standing on a building we were near. Looking from the picture to the building today was one of the first vivid connections I made. Something I did not know is that not all of the people who arrived at the death camps were ever registered as inmates. It leads me to wonder how many human beings perished there that were never identified. The most horrifying part of the tour was reading the book of names. I looked up my own name as well as other names in my family, and it brought me to tears reading how many victims I shared a name with. As difficult as it was, I am so thankful for the opportunity to learn there.

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Seeing the shoe shiner display in Auschwitz was very emotional because of the symbolism behind the kits. Since the Jews believed they would only be at the camp temporarily, they brought shoe shine to clean their shoes for when it was time to leave. In the present day, we know that there was a slight chance of leaving Auschwitz alive, but the Jews had an immense amount of hope. The ability to maintain a hopeful attitude at a concentration camp is hard to fathom, yet it was vital for the survival of the Jews.

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Today as we walked the camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau the exhibit that really struck me was seeing the children’s clothing. Millions of thoughts began running through my head such as how innocent and pure these kids were, but they were taken out of this world in unthinkable ways just because of their religion or beliefs. The clothes specifically sitting in the glass case (shown below) looked too small to fit on the back of my seven year old brother, and in that moment I felt my heart break when I finally realized the truths behind these camps. Knowing that the majority of children and families in general never made it to see a second day after arriving became to surreal in my eyes. No person, regardless of race, religion, nationality, or beliefs should be punished in such a way. Seeing this simple outfit that once belonged to a small, innocent child allowed me to feel every emotion in a matter of seconds.