Processing Auschwitz

I've been struggling with how to describe my journey to Auschwitz. It's a hard one to tackle, there is of course the simple narrative, but there's also so many feelings I had before, during and after. It's a struggle for me to comprehend all I've seen and come to terms with what I did comprehend. I've also become fascinated with other people's experiences with Auschwitz. It seems like everyone takes something different away with them from the site, but there's also the universal "Oh my God" when the Holocaust stops being just something we read about.

The thing I most connected with were the stories of the people who did good and heroic things in spite of all the horror, for example, Oscar Schindler. This was a man who should have never cared; he was a Nazi, a war profiteer, a run-of-the-mill greedy bastard who only cared about himself. He should have been the last person on earth to look around and go "Hey, this isn't right. I need to help these people." That he went broke saving the lives of Jews astonishes me. A mind boggling number of people turned a blind eye to what was happening, yet the most unlikely of folks risked their lives, safety, family and friends to save fellow humans.

I think in some ways I know I can never comprehend the why's of the evil that happened. That this mass extermination of human beings happened at all is something I will never fully wrap my head around. No matter how many ways it's explained to me I always come back to the same question, "Yes, but why?" This wasn't just a few crazy people doing a few crazy things, this was insanity on an unimaginable scale. Well- organized insanity at that.

I'll be slowly working through my Auschwitz experience over the next few weeks. I hope I ultimately find a coherent way to tell the story.