I’m not really sure how comprehensive this blog’s going to be but I just felt that I wanted to put something down on paper after my visit to Auswitcz yesterday.

I was invited by UJS to go on the Holocaust Educational Trust’s trip to the concentration camp of Auswitcz Birkenou(?) We had a preparation day at the synagogue about 10 days beforehand, and it was only yesterday once we were on the trip that I realised just how important that had been in terms of making each of us individually think about why we were going and what our expectations about the trip were. The testimony we heard from Auswitcz survivor Kitty Hart that day stunned us at the time, and for me, really personalised the trip yesterday.

Its hard to find the words to describe yesterday. Harrowing, interesting, distressing yes but none of those words seem to come close enough to describing the experience, and really I suppose that’s why I feel grateful to have had the chance to see it for myself. You can read books, watch documentaries, visit museums, but its not the same. Nothing has ever come close to making real for me the reality of the Holocaust as standing in the gas chamber basement of the ‘death block’ in the spot where hundreds died, or standing in the watch tower, looking down on to the rail tracks- entirely unchanged, it felt, from the images of them in the pictures we have all seen from Auswitcz in 1944, as the fate of new arrivals was decided.

Even thought I knew before I went, there are a few things in hindsight I cant get my head round. Like the fact that the Holocaust really was not very long ago. 60 years. Its nothing. Walking around Auswitcz I, looking at the buildings it was not much of a stretch to imagine life there. Visiting it, for me, took it out of history and really brought home to me how close to life today it actually was. The other thing which I haven’t stopped being able to think about is something that one of the students in our group said on the preparation day, and that is that Holocaust survivors won’t be around for much longer. Hearing Kitty’s very personal life story, again made the Holocaust suddenly very real, and really impacted on me. We need those personal testimonies, and we need to preservation of these sites so that we never forget what happened during the Holocaust because the prospect of that really is terrifying. I suppose I should also say that despite what I was expecting, the trip wasn’t an ordeal. It was upsetting, and massive food for thought, but I also feel I personally got something very strong out of it.

There is so much more detail I could give of the days events, and perhaps I should, I certainly feel I want to do something to share my experiences yesterday, but in the first instance this has just been a bit of an outpouring, and as that this blog has been cathartic for me.

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