Each of these sites is really quite different from the others. Here I stood in line to receive a time-stamped ticket. I now wait 45 minutes to stand in line for my allotted entrance time. For hours this morning I was alone at Birkenau, meeting only occasional individuals or pairs. We trudged past each other with wordless grim-faced gazes and disappeared back into the fog. Thursday I hiked through the woods around Sobibór by GPS, watching and listening for guards. Something is very wrong here. I keep looking at that snack bar, but I’m not going to put its photo on my blog. I just can’t do that.
The middle of the middle placard.
What does it mean to be an adult, to smile and make rabbit ears over a friend’s head while having your photo taken under the Arbeit Macht Frei sign at Auschwitz?
There are crowds walking about with audio tour headsets on. Each time I’ve tried that – most recently at the Solidarity Center in Gdansk – I don’t like it and take the thing off. It turns me into a voyeur, consuming packaged entertainment, listening to someone else’s thoughts, not my own.
