Reflections on Visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau

Facing the horrors of history so we never forget

Photo by Author — The gate to the entrance of Auschwitz.

During my last trip to Europe, I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau. It’s something I have always wanted to do because I grew up in New York City, where many of my friends’ families were directly impacted by the Holocaust.

I wanted to pay my respects and bear witness to one of the darkest chapters in human history. I knew it would be an emotionally intense experience, but I still found myself unprepared for the overwhelming reality of standing on those grounds.

Perhaps I was naïve to think I could grasp the full weight of what happened there, but the truth hit me harder than I ever imagined.

I learned that Auschwitz-Birkenau was actually a vast network of , established by the Nazis in occupied Poland. Its location in a remote, rural part of Poland was deliberately chosen so that the atrocities committed there would remain hidden from the outside world.

This system of camps became a central piece of the Nazis’ machinery of genocide, where over , the majority of them Jewish, were exterminated. also included Polish and Baltic intellectuals, Roma people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, queer people, disabled individuals, Soviet prisoners of…