Let me tell you why I cannot go to Auschwitz.

There were women scattered over the floor on scraps of straw, some, some of them quite obviously with the mark of death on their faces. Uh, their, they, they, all of them looked just horrible, and of course we could see they were emaciated and, and ill. And something that I have never been able to forget, was an extraordinary thing that happened. The girl who was my guide made sort of a sweeping gesture over this scene of devastation, and said the following words: "Noble be man, merciful and good." And I could hardly believe that she was able to summon a poem by the German poet Goethe, which was called--is called--"The Divine," at such a moment. And there was nothing that she could have said that would have underscored the grim irony of the situation better than, than what she did. And it was a totally shattering experience for me.
-Liberator Kurt Klein, from the Holocaust Museum's archives.

Cracow, Poland, November 2009


For god's sake.

I invoke something I don't even believe in, thinking of this. We are sitting around the kitchen table at the hostel, a group of us, and discussing what we're planning to do in Cracow. Everyone else, all six of them, have a bit of a go-around. Two of them are Jewish.

-Are you guys going to do Auschwitz?

Yeah, I reckon we'll go in the morning.

-What about all you guys? You going, too?

I am the only one at the table who says no. They stare. I stare back. There's a division between us now, and suddenly I am swamped by protests:

-You can't come here and NOT go to Auschwitz. I mean, it's so important. You really have to go.

I bridle, as I always do when someone tells me I HAVE to do something. No, I don't. I don't have to do anything. But this time it is not a mere refusal out of petulance; it's not just that I feel backed into the inevitable corner formed by the intersection of one person's choice to action, and another's to inaction.

I cannot do this thing. I cannot go to Auschwitz.

-No, seriously! I can't believe you're not going. Why not?

Let me tell you. Let me tell you, as I told them, why I cannot go to Auschwitz.

It is not my story to tell.

All these comments around the table underscore immediately what makes me shudder with revulsion when I am dragged into a conversation like this one, all about how, to truly be confronted by the horror and the grief and the scale of it all, one must go there, must attend the sites, and hear the true accounts, and listen to the 30-minute documentary film. The same revulsion surfaces again whilst reading others' blogs or essays about how they've gone there and done that. How 'here is a photo of the gate that says ARBEIT MACHT FREI'. About how it's changed them.

And yet, what is it that changes within them, save for the amplification of non-generational guilt, of that universal apology that wells up in all of us when we think of it? We are so sorry. We are so sorry that someone did this to you. We are sorry, of course, but for what? The cliches are flying all around the table: overwhelming, terrible tragedy, absolutely unbelievable, living people like skeletons. I can feel my irritation growing. Why is everyone so intent upon this, the one denial they've heard of the desire they all feel to set foot on that grass and to walk through that gate and to view the collected, preserved piles of eyeglasses, of children's shoes, of human hair?

It is because they do not understand that there are some things so profound one does not need to see them to experience them. We've all heard the speeches following 9/11, from politicians and celebrities and public figures. We've all seen the news clips, read the articles. As much as those events were unbelievable, they were also a source of deep sorrow for the world at large, in countries to whom nothing had as of yet happened, in places one might not have expected. And some of these sympathizers, who cried when they heard, whose furrowed brows appeared on T.V. or in the paper had never set foot on U.S. soil. The mere thought of it, the application of the imagination--placing themselves in the shoes of the victims, of the families, of the country as an entity--was enough. It was too much. It was more than they could handle.

And maybe that's it then, the primary reason that I simply cannot bring myself to view Auschwitz: selfishness. I have sat through enough films, in class or at home, with the lights dimmed, with tears streaming down my face. I have read Anne Frank's diary, and Eli Wiesel's novels, and transcripts from interviews with survivors, with civilians, the Nuremberg Trials. I know what's there, in Auschwitz, now arranged and displayed and ready for viewing. And I know what I would do, if I went:

I would lose my mind. I would lose my mind from sorrow.

To confront this place is to confront what I already know: that evil in its human forms exists like this, that 6 million people were shot and gassed and starved. I already know these things, the numbers. I already know what I do not want to know: that we are capable this. Yes, we. For why should we be allowed to distinguish when humanity is itself an entity? I know what would happen there, in front of the display of children's shoes (children! My god.). I would be broken by it. I would cry. Perhaps I would vomit. And I would become angry. I would become angry at us. I would become angry...at myself.

All of this, dear reader, to you, seems perhaps hyperbolic and perhaps false. I cannot convince you that it isn't. I cannot convince you, either, of how one should react. They're asking me again, why I cannot do this thing. Why I don't decide to go with them:

-You should just come. You might be surprised.
Yeah, isn't that the point? It's supposed to be hard on you.
-It's not like it's fun or something.

Someone asks about flash photography. Someone else pulls out a brochure.

-No, no. You can take pictures there. It says.
Oh, ok cool.

Pictures. As if this were another tourist attraction. "This is me in front of Auschwitz."

For god's sake.

This, again, I have no desire to do, to experience. Hordes of tourists with cameras, people with backpacks and purses and maps. To be surrounded by those who have come "to do Auschwitz", to feel a powerful remorse, then to get back on the bus and inquire where one might find some lunch around here. I do not want to be near anyone, if nor when I fall apart. I couldn't bear it. I cannot bear a mass of humanity standing about trying to fathom what it all means, in the same spot where humanity was being dismantled, defiled, torn apart.

And so I tell them with as much vehemence as I can:

This is not my story to tell. It is and always will be my story to hear.

For when I cease to listen and begin to speak, I am adding a layer of sentimentality, a layer of falsehood, a veil. It is not my story to tell how I stood in front of a tour guide and was moved to tears by his speech. Not my story to tell anyone that I have seen the gate marked ARBEIT MACHT FREI, nor how it might have chilled me. It is not my story to add photos to, of the barracks emptied and cleaned, or the ovens.

It is my story to hear and hear alone, about how someone else was saved here, and someone else died, and some people more lost their mothers and children, and fathers, and lives. To never put an image to save for those made by voices, by memoirs and films.

As to the need to see it, to understand, I will tell you now that I never, never want will. That going there will not help the desperately angry and lost feeling I have when I am reminded that this thing has happened. I do not want anger to dissolve completely into sorrow; anger is active. Anger has inertia. I must grieve and rage at the same time, sometimes, to continue on in a world where we battle the seeds of this thing always.

I cannot be the person who sits at a table, and puts on a list of things to see today, Concentration camps.

Perhaps no one accepts this. Perhaps I sound bitter, or disdainful to those who did choose to go. I assure you I am not. They tried to convince me once more to come with them, and in my head, once again, I heard my own voice crying out,

For god's sake, don't ask me. For god's sake, I can't.

the pleas we make to divinity when we cannot comprehend what is asked of us, what's happened, what we thought could not be.

Two days later, we take a tour of Wieliczka Salt Mines. On the bus, I meet two women from Holland, one who's been to Cracow many times in the last few years. I've been to the camps, she says, I've been more than once.

She tells me she doesn't know, anymore, what to make of it. She says she's always brought to her knees by it. Then she tells me she won't be going this time. Her friend will just have to go alone.

-Why is that?, I ask her. Why not this time?

She tells me that (and this she cannot take any longer), between the gate exiting Auschwitz, and the gate leading into Birkenau, there are always people taking photos. She says she can't go anymore, that it's all too much, each and every time.

Then she tells me, her eyes raised to the sky, that just inside the gate to Birkenau, they have built a pizza stand.

-A pizza stand. Pizza and hot dogs. Right there. Right there where they starved them to death.


On the bus ride, I can think of nothing but that I want my mother. I sleep a little, I think. I think I dream of vultures.