The worst thing was

The worst thing was: The warm sunshine.

The worst thing was: The blue sky.

The worst thing was: The green gras.

The worst thing was: The colourful flowers.

The worst thing was: The pretty path.

The worst thing was: The inconspicuous clearing.

The worst thing was: The small trench.

The worst thing was: The white wall.

The worst thing was: The grey memorial stones.

The worst thing was: The carved in writing.

The worst thing was: The agonizing sorrow.

The worst thing was: The dark room.

The worst thing was: The small flaps.

The worst thing was: The inflowing light.

The worst thing was: The old photos.

The worst thing was: The unspeakable actions.

The worst thing was: The blue sky.

The worst thing was: The warm sunshine.



My teacher asked us to write down our impressions. We were sitting in the visitors centers cafeteria. People, my classmates, my friends were eating, talking, laughing. I was sitting alone squeezed between them. I felt sick. I understood that it was hard for most to truly understand what they just saw and I knew that they all thought it was horrible but I just couldn´t belive how completley unaffected they seemed.

How could they eat after what they just saw.
How could they talk like nothing happened.
How could they laugh when only a few meters away unspeakable things happened not that long ago.

Someone talked to me. I nodded. Apparentley he had asked me if he could have my sandwich because he took it. I was glad. I would´ve felt even worse having to throw it away.
I couldn´t stand the people anymore.
I asked for a piece of paper and went to sit outside.

It was cold outside. They sun was shining but it wasn´t enough to warm me.
My impressions.
I stared at the paper not able to write anything.

I though about the visit.

Dachau concentration camp memorial site.

It is hard to try to explain what I felt like. We learn in school what happened during WW2. My mother is very interested in history and she knows a lot which she passes on to us.
My grandparents all lived during that time. My grandfathers are both dead. But my grandmothers tell me stories. They did not experience the unnamable things the people who were in the kz did. They have their own terrors.
It is very hard for me to listen to their stories.I want to hear them but it is still hard.
I love my grandmothers, both have their flaws like everyone else and both hurt my parents intentionally and unintentionally during their childhood but I still love them and when I hear how my grandma was abandoned by her mother with 17 as their home was going to be overrun by military and had to walk alone, 30km to Krakau in winter, hiding when the bullets rained down, having to see her companion shot down before her eyes and all the other things she tells - it hurts me.

I am disgusted. sickened. revulsed. by human nature.
I walk through that memorial site and I´m hit with all this feelings, hoplessness, nausea, pain, sadness.


Here is where the baracks stood. Two were rebuild as models.
They are new. Light brown wood. Clean. Light coming through the windows.

This nice path through the woods and that white wall? This is were they made them stand in a neat line and shot them. This little trench? They made it so the blood would pool there and dry up.
Flowers are blooming there. You can see the blue sky and sun.

Do you see the little slits in the wall in this big room? Now light is coming through them. Once death did.
It smells like nothing in here. The air is stale with a light breeze coming through the flaps in the wall once in a while.

Come on through this door. One, two, three, four ovens. They were not used for baking. The smell of burning flesh was well known by the people housing in the baracks.
red. brick. empty black holes. The door is open, we can walk outside. Someone just received a text. The ping echoed in here.


This is so sick.
I am ashamed.

---This is my experience. My impressions. My thoughts.
People say: It was not you who did that. Honour the dead by never letting something like that happen. Do not forget the past
but don´t let it control the present and future. Live a better life.
Okay.
Still. I feel sick. I am disgusted by us. Humans. Me.
My friends do not understand how I can be so upset. "Yeah, it´s terrible but don´t take it so personal."
That´s who I am.