A different dimension

For my research, I have seen many sites from both World Wars across Europe over the years. Last weekend, I visited Auschwitz for the first time, and for me, this was a new dimension.

I participated in a 3:45-hour-long guided tour and saw many of the original places but also piles of suitcases, dishes, shoes and glasses. This made it particularly concrete given that 1.1 million people were killed here.

I talked to other participants in the guided group: Germans, Swiss, Dutch and Flemish people. Many of them told me that it is a very emotional, oppressive experience for them to see this place, they often didn’t find words for it and said they must process everything. “It is a place everyone must see”, two of them said.

Also the guide told me more about her motivation: “We as guides want to communicate history. We want to show what the human being is capable of doing and what hatred can lead to.”

One very important sentence which I read in the memorial was: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This sentence made me wonder whether humankind will be able to learn from it, since the past seems far away and people sometimes tend to believe that it doesn’t concern them. However, it is crucial to understand that under certain circumstances and with time, something like this could potentially occur anywhere in the world, regardless of which groups might be involved.

Visiting Auschwitz gave me a broader view on the topic. In my view, learning about it in school, reading about it in a book or seeing it in a documentary is hardly comparable. You can only grasp the scale of what happened by personally being there, and even then you cannot fully comprehend.