Telling people’s stories is something I feel compelled to do, but this is one story I wish no one ever had to tell. In fact the Holocaust is not one story at all, it is tens of millions of stories, abruptly ended, forcefully cut short, terminated.
About 1.1 million people perished in Auschwitz-Birkenau in the south of what was then occupied-Poland.
Despite being one of the darkest places I have ever set foot in, I recommend to anyone to visit the Auschwitz camp and genocide memorial. To run your fingers along the walls of an old gas chamber, to see with your own eyes the heaps of countless shoes stolen from Jewish victims, to walk along the gravely paths that saw so many marched to their deaths.
A visit here is utterly heartbreaking but also important I think. It was a surreal experience to visit these grounds alongside tourists from every corner of the globe, from the UK to Israel, China to Germany. But the fact people are coming in the first place is a cause to hope I think: as a human species, we need to remember, in order to do better. In the words of George Santayana which are displayed at the entrance to the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.
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