Inside the Camps

In Ravensbrook and Auschwitz, I tried to gain some minute glimpse into what the inmates there saw, felt, experienced. Where could they find hope in Ravensbrook? Was it the green of the leaves on the trees, the blueness of a clear German spring day? I was told in Auschwitz that desperate prisoners had eaten all of the leaves in the main camp and that only inmates who held hope stayed alive? I was further from understanding than before.

In the main camp at Auschwitz, I was considered a newcomer from a Polish Jewish woman, who was younger than me. She had visited the camp many times. She wryly told me, with a poignancy that she probably didn't realize, that she would protect me. Her presence gave me comfort. I was tired and famished; the sounds created a type of madness. Of course, comparing my exhaustion and hunger to that of the actual prisoners would be the same as comparing a mild paper cut to a limb-less Iraqi orphan. And, it actuality, I would not have been able to feel this young woman's warmth, because the sexes would have been separated. Instead, I would have been surrounded by men, some good, some bad, all in the process of dying.

In Birkenau I was overcome with the tragic history of every rock, every splinter of wood on the railroad tracks, every blade of grass. It was too much to take. At one point, I became weak. I was so weak that I just had to sit, my yarmulke still perched on my head. Were they alive, my grandparents would be mortified that I went into a concentration camp. I just wanted to get the hell out of there.

After listening to a granddaughter of survivors pour out her emotions, I gained strength. But later, alone, I fell back into the abyss of uncertainty. Would I ever get out? I stumbled towards whichever direction I thought was the way out. Unfortunately, I had lost my sense of direction.

When I finally found the way out, I walked into a barrack. I felt trapped again. Then came Eric, representing the American army. He asked, "I don't mean to rush you, but we have to go."

Rush me?! I imagined an American officer telling an inmate that very sentence.

I returned to Birkenau with the group the following night. I was scared. I prayed before I walked into the camp again. A few steps in I froze. Two young men asked me what my plan was. I said that I didn't know. The third, Miffy, asked a different way. We requested that I walked with him. It occurred to me while walking with him that this place could not hurt me. Only people could. I walked with Miffy, an Austrian, and we talked about ping pong, politics, and joked with each other. I didn't have to fear this place. I came back a free man. I laid the stones from my family in the field of ashes and went to our meeting place. There, Claudia, a young German woman took me in her arms. It was much more than a Jew and a German embracing in Birkenau. Two people who truly respected each other and each other's struggle with their familial history embraced.

I could wave off a German man's question. I could joke with an Austrian. I could hug a German woman. I could sit on the railroad tracks as a train in the distance could be heard. I could walk down the railroad tracks, Claudia in one hand, and Patricia, a Polish Jew, the woman who stood by me in the main camp, in the other. And I could walk out of the camp by myself. With my head held high.