I knew that it wasn’t about to be an upbeat tour, but I had no idea that the next three hours were about to be some of the most eye opening and truly upsetting hours of my life. I told my parents the day before that I would be touring Auschwitz the following day and I was told to mentally prepare. While I was sure that the tour was not going to the most lighthearted thing I’d ever do, I couldn’t have ever expected just how horrifying it would be.

Upon entering Auschwitz the first thing I saw was the gate that said “Arbeit Macht Frei” which translates to “work makes you free”. It was surrounded by barbed wire and watch tours and it was in that moment it became so incredibly clear to me how tragic a place I was about to enter. This sign, I then realized, while to me signified the beginning of a tour, signified to many before me that they were headed to a concentration camp with no definite departure date. It became clear to me that this tour was about to be so much more that about how I felt, rather it was about to be a slap in the face reminding me of our planet’s horrific past. Any pain I would feel would be trivial in comparison to the pain felt here in the 1940’s.

We went from barrack to barrack viewing the memorial that had been created inside. Each barrack held something different. Some held pictures showing prisoners getting off a train, being separated, and being sent to either work or immediate death. It was shocking to see exactly how methodical the whole process was. I was numbed by all the hatred that this place held. It was horrifying to see pictures but it got so much more real when we saw rooms full of leftover suitcases, shoes, and even hair from all those murdered in this place. We saw dungeons where people were placed to starve or to stand until exhaustion. Each room became more and more horrifying. There was no end to the pain that the Nazi’s created in this space.

We ended the tour of Auschwitz I at the gas chambers. There is only one still standing as after the camps were liberated the Nazi’s tried to cover their trail and destroy the place they destroyed so many lives prior. No words. The scratch marks on the walls, the incinerator in the room right over, it was all so much to process. Many tears were shed in this spot, but how could you not shed tears in a place that claimed the lives of thousands in one of the most horrific ways possible? How could you not be upset that our world ever thought that it was acceptable to do that?

Learning about the holocaust in school is one thing, but seeing where it happened first hand was completely another. We moved on to Auschwitz-Birkenau, which more than anything else showed the scale of just how large the camp was. The barracks continued on for kilometers and we only saw the ruins for much of it. We walked to the ruins of the other gas chambers and saw the memorial that had been created in those grounds. Surrounding this entire area was the ashes of over a million who had been sent to the extermination camp. The memorial created for this area read, “For ever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity where the Nazis murdered about one and a half million me, women, and children, mainly Jews from various countries of Europe”. Despair was one of the only fitting words to describe the area. It was clear to see the train tracks, which brought people in from all over Europe to this camp and how close the tracks stopped to the gas chambers. Being sent there was immediate after getting off the train, and if it wasn’t immediate that meant that you would be forced to live in one of the many barracks that were poorly built and even more poorly maintained.

While it was completely horrifying to see the concentration and extermination camp, I wouldn’t go back and undo going on the tour. Being there and seeing exactly what terrible things humanity is capable of is necessary to make sure that we don’t repeat it. Hatred will get us nowhere, this camp as evidence. I was hesitant to write about my experience on the tour, but someone has to talk about it. We can't avoid a conversation because it makes us uncomfortable. Someone has to remind us of our past otherwise, as George Santayana said, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. And this is something we simply cannot ever repeat. This tour shattered my perspective of the world once again, but it is still a tour I would recommend to anyone in a heartbeat. In order to improve our world we need to understand where we come from so that we can head in a better direction.