Going to Auschwitz was always part of the plan. The Holocaust is a historical event that always hit a little too close to home due to some reasons I will not share here. However, one thing I can tell you is that those reasons actually helped me write an essay about the event that led me to win my first writing award. Later, I was sent to Israel for the 1st International Youth Congress on Holocaust Remembrance.
That week I spent in Israel made me go on a deep dive into history and somehow (try to) understand what happened to the people persecuted during the second world war. There wasn’t a day when my fellow congress participants and I weren’t crying as we went through the halls of Yad Vashem, looked through records and items left behind by the victims, and even when we met actual survivors of the Holocaust.
If you know me personally, you would know that I’m not one for crying in public. But the Yad Vashem Museum in Israel? Oh, that was an exception.
During the seminars, the talks, and even when we got to meet the late President Shimon Peres, Auschwitz was always mentioned. I knew what and where it was. We all know the horrors that happened there. We’ve read books about the Holocaust – from Anne Frank to Primo Levi, down to Elie Wiesel. Sure, it was painful to discuss knowing the suffering people experienced in these camps people talk about – especially Auschwitz – but they always felt a little too abstract.
That is, until I found myself there.
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