While this is a personal blog, I try to keep it focused on either technical topics or personal development and leadership related to technical topics. This post is a complete deviation from all of the above. Please, read it anyway.

I went to Auschwitz and Birkenau.

Words are failing me here.

Before I went, I was terribly conflicted about the trip. I had the opportunity to visit another Nazi concentration camp, Dachau, and I deferred. I know horror was committed there. Why should I voluntarily subject myself to it? As part of a trip to Poland, Aaron Bertrand suggested we should take a couple of extra days to see the sights, including visiting Auschwitz. I didn’t want to go. Then I started thinking.

Obligation. Honor. Remembrance. Humility. Respect.

I truly don’t consider myself to be all that good a person. However, I’m trying. I see how my betters behave and I try to appropriately ape that behavior. In this case Aaron was setting the path for me, so I followed.

What to say about the place?

The scale is staggering. You may have looked at pictures. You might have seen films. While a picture may paint a thousand words, you need millions of words to appropriately describe the utter enormity of the staggering horror that place represents. 1.3 million people in the door and 1.1 million died. That required massive, focused, efficiency, planning, thought and nearly limitless evil. It’s not the act of foaming at the mouth madmen. Standing in the middle of Birkenau, in the rail yard (a ******* rail yard for ******* humans, by all the gods… anyway…), you can feel and see all that, despite the fact that the place is mostly a ruin. Lots and lots of people visit Auschwitz. The name is synonymous with… all of it. However, fewer go over to Birkenau. Honestly, you have to go to Birkenau. Nothing can prepare you and nothing is equivalent.

Emotionally…

Horror, of course. Way too much rage. Sadness. And, frankly, and very surprisingly, a certain deadness inside. I actually got to the point where I read another plaque about X number of people being processed and there was nothing there. It had all been hollowed out. I think that was the single most surprising moment. My empathy pool and just been utterly drained. It only took 1.3 million people. Of course, with a little time between me and that place, I’m back to tearing up as I type this.

I’m not completely sure why I feel so compelled to share this, yet I must. I cannot recommend enough that you go and visit this place if you have the opportunity. If you don’t have the opportunity, you need to make it. I read  a lot of history, so the concept of “Never Again” is a sad joke. However, maybe, just maybe, if enough people stand in that rail yard, or in front of Incinerator #5 (which means there is 1-4…. rage again), maybe if enough people get the education that place provides, maybe “Never Again” will actually come to be more than just a vain hope.

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