An Individual StorySuitcases and glasses left behind at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Photo Credit Auschwitz - Birkenau museum What would I pack if I could take one suitcase to hold my whole life? What would I choose as the things that were most important to me if I needed to prepare one bag to start my life over again in another place? How much could I carry? When Jews arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau, they came bearing the luggage that they needed to start a "new life in the East". Germans promised that they were leaving the overcrowded ghettos for "resettlement" in the east, encouraged them to bring all of their money to buy a farm or a house when the arrived. Instead, the Nazis killed the majority of Jews who stepped off the trains at Auschwitz - BIrkenau, either through hard labor or work, and stole their most prized possessions, carefully sorted and sent to the Third Reich. What is left today is a large cross section of the many things that people carried with them and they tell us an inordinate amount about the people who brought them but they also leave us with endless questions. Among the Jews' belongings left behind at the camps by the Nazis as they fled the advancing Soviet Red Army in 1944 are glasses, shoes, clothing, prayer shawls, pots and pans, shoe polish kits, combs...the things that people felt they needed for their new life. Practical objects in dire times intended to help them start over again. And each of these objects were brought by a person, by a family. This was not just a pile of glasses but hundreds of thousands of individual pairs, each that sat perched on individual noses. I wonder about the men and women who wore them - were they young or were they old? Had they worn glasses long or were the pair they left behind at Auschwitz new? Were they in the habit of removing them and rubbing their eyes often or did they look over the top of them in a serious way? Each new thing I learn about the Holocaust makes me think of individuals - sometimes when we consistently talk about the number "Six Million" it is easy to forget that each of those was an individual who had a family, people who loved them, friends who knew them. At its heart the Holocaust is an individual story - hundreds of thousands of mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters who were killed for no reason. Entire families who were never "resettled in the East" but wiped out. This trip has exemplified the importance of the individual story and keeping alive the memory of those who died through the testimony of those who survived. Today I stood in a barrack in Birkenau with a survivor, tattoo visible on his arm, as he told us his story of survival in a horrific place - a childhood lost at 14 working for the Nazis, glimpsing his father one final time through the barbed wire, leaving the camp one last time on a death march through Poland and Germany. Soon it will be an impossible experience - survivors cannot live forever. But sitting there with Howard Chandler as he described his experiences, answered questions openly and honestly, and even stopped to talk with and invite other groups to join us as we walked with him made me realize the importance of Holocaust education. If he can open up those old wounds again and again because he believes the mission is important then I can certainly do my part to make sure that the next generation knows the horrors of the Holocaust. Holocaust survivor Howard Chandler telling his story of survival, Birkenau July 2, 2016. Photo credit Nanci Goldberg Teaching the Holocaust goes beyond teaching tolerance - it is about understanding that we all share in a human story. I read a terribly graphic page of that story today - of 1.5 million individual people killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, among them Jews, Poles, Roma, and Soviet POWs. It is our responsibility to write a better story on tomorrow's page.
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About the Trip
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