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You don’t “visit” Auschwitz. You don’t willingly enter the site of greatest evil and suffering the planet has held. The darkness is too great.

The only way to make this journey is to discover that goodness is always stronger than evil, and that it takes only one act of goodness to break the death-grip of hell.

On January 25, 2010, our delegation of American visitors walked thru the Gate of Death onto the infamous Selection Platform of Auschwitz II, or Birkenau, where Eva Mozes Kor, our mentor and guide, was torn from her mother’s arms, never to see her again. Eva and her twin sister Miriam were the sole survivors of the Mozes family who unloaded from the cattle cars; the two who went ‘left’ to the barracks, while their parents and older sisters were sent ‘right’ to the crematorium. The subjects of heinous medical experimentation, the young girls survived until the liberation in January 1945, and began the long odyssey of the rest of their lives.

“I have been in Auschwitz  thirteen times voluntarily, once involuntarily.” Eva returns to Auschwitz every few years, to teach and to remember, and to proclaim to her charges that when she could forgive the Nazi doctors who inflicted suffering on her, she discovered that she was no longer their victim. “It was a life-changing event for me.”  Miriam died in 1993 from illnesses resulting from the experiments, and Eva lives to tell her story.  Candles Holocaust Museum

The sheer vastness of Birkenau is numbing:  a wasteland of broken down barracks, punctuated by the brick chimneys of their small fireplaces. Four hundred and sixty-eight acres, it was not big enough to accomplish what the Nazis wanted to achieve: new sections were under construction even as the distant thunder of liberation was heard in the winter of 1944-1945. At the end of a kilometer of triple train tracks are the ruins of the 4 large crematoria, which were blown up by the Nazis as they fled westward, away from the Russians. The perimeter is still marked by the curved concrete posts, barbed wire intact, the lamps now empty. Your mind tells you it’s not true: you’re not standing on the selection platform in Birkenau, while all your senses affirm the fact.

Our delegation spent four days trying to comprehend what happened here. Auschwitz I, initially a Polish army camp taken over by Nazis in 1940 and where the extermination began, now houses the museum and multiple exhibits that ensure that the Holocaust will never be forgotten. Provocative displays of human hair, shoes, eye glasses, and named suitcases fill one of the barracks. The first underground crematorium in Auschwitz I still exists, and on the iron trolleys that loaded corpses into the ovens, we lit Jahrzeit candles and recited Kaddish. It is cold there, a cold that only comes from hell. The brave flames pierced the gloom, and Kaddish remembered the dead and asked that our faith in God not waiver.

Located in Auschwitz I is Cell 18, in the “death barracks” beside the execution wall.  The door way to Cell 18 remains closed with an iron grill, for it is holy ground. Maximillian Kolbe died on the floor of this cell, having made the ultimate sacrifice. A Polish national and a priest, he offered his life in the place of another inmate with children who was randomly selected for execution as punishment for a block mate who did not appear at roll call. Kolbe did die, and the man he saved lived to see liberation. What are Jesus’ words? Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.  The power of evil and death in Auschwitz was penetrated and broken by uncounted acts of selflessness and sacrifice for others.

On the 27th of January we stood at the end of the tracks and heard speeches by the president of Poland, Lech Kaczynski, and several survivors. We watched Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walk past the Birkenau monument, and we heard his words. All the speeches contained eloquent calls to remembrance, pleading that the Holocaust never be repeated. But we did not hear words pointing to an alternative, to a fool-proof way to make sure it would never happen again: Forgiveness.

In Poland, all students are required to visit one of the concentration camps within its borders, either Auschwitz, or Sobibor, or Majdanek, or Treblinka, to name only some.  Most Israeli students come here too, to “never forget”. And so the camp was filled with tour groups, their cameras and tour-earphones, hearing their guides in their own language. But we had something that may have been unique among museum visitors, and which cuts across nationalities and cultures. We had a witness to the power of forgiveness, everywhere we went, and this key unlocked the door to something we never expected to find in Auschwitz. Hope.

 

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Responses

thank you for letting this candle of light still burn for so many that have never suffered not even a loved one.  I kneel to all who survived and seek to be worthier of those who never again saw the light of day but rather saw The Light as their mortal eyes shut tight and left this dark and dreary world into God's reserved paradise!

debbie
los angeles

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...One of the things Yahweh commanded me to do was to forgive the Natzis. I must say it was extremely difficult, and nothing but my great love for Him (YESHUA) and the knowledge of my own wickedness enabled me to release the deep hatred I had for these people whom my father had brought to life for me. He had a way of telling stories that made you feel as if you were right there going through the anguish yourself, and then of course I saw a man whom I deeply loved, destroy himself mentally and physically and spiritually because of his hatred, and was powerless to help him. I believe that was what hurt the most. I cried out to Yahweh on his behalf, however he ended up taking me out of his will due to my becoming a Christian. He even wrote in the will that his reason for rejecting me was because of my choice to except Yeshua as the Messiah. I have never regreted that decision. And I applaud you Eva for your great courage in forgiving.

In the name of
Yehoshua Ha Mosiach.
Ruth Farley
Spokane/ Washington