On Sunday morning, I went to Auschwitz. I had to take an Uber there from the Tyniec monastery. It was jarring to take Uber to Auschwitz. It was jarring to pass by strip malls and movie theaters and all the usual signs of modern life only a short walking distance from the scene of world-historical mass murder. Watching through the car window older Poles walking to mass down the streets of Oswiecim, I wondered what it's like to live in a town that is forever associated with infamy — even though your people were victims, not perpetrators.
I have the sense that I'm like someone who ran to the melting-down Chernobyl reactor to see what was happening, and now have to wait to see the effects of radiation poisoning. It wouldn't be correct to say that "nothing prepares you for Auschwitz." In fact, our culture does a pretty good job preparing people for Auschwitz, though I will agree that standing in front of the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" gate really does give you a jolt. The entire time I walked around the grounds, I was praying my prayer rope for the souls of the dead. If I'm honest, I was also praying it, in a sense, for myself — as a kind of shield against the moral horror of what I was seeing.
Read Full Article »