Reflections on Auschwitz

Auschwitz-Birkenau was immensely devastating for me. The massiveness and the enormity of the camp were horrifying and it was unbelievable to imagine how as many as 500 people could fit and live in a small building which was poorly equipped with no proper provision of food, sanitation, clothes etc. It was extremely difficult to comprehend that within those old, broken walls, millions of innocent people tragically drowned in a sea of deadly Zyklon B gas and I still can't understand how any human being like you and me is able to send people to death traps so vast and so horrible.
Lena Fuldauer - first year IB student - Germany

Where do I even start? Visiting Auschwitz was a journey of extremes, it echoed with past hatred, brutality and death but there were also signs of compassion, love and commemoration, like glimmering diamonds in stinking mud. It was an emotional experience and I find myself touched forever by it, pledging to live my life free of prejudice, discrimination and hatred.
Rufus Lunn - first year IB student - UK

Visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau was an experience that I will never forget. Being there, actually physically being within a place that had been designed for such brutality and hatred and death... there are no words to describe it. The idea that people were able to survive and continue living despite the hatred of a society intent on genocide is something that I cannot begin to comprehend. The only way we can stop this from happening again is to do our best to stop discrimination and prejudice from entering our lives and the lives of those around us.
Hannah Woodfield - first year IB student - UK

On the 2nd of March we visited Auschwitz. Hannah, Rufus, Lena and I departed very early from Luton airport. In the plane we were thinking how this experience would affect us. When we arrived there, our emotions were so much different from what we had expected. Auschwitz 1 was shocking but not as much as Auschwitz 2 or Auschwitz Birkenau. The feelings that I had, the emotions that I felt in front of this enormous camp, that didn't have an end. I felt so depressed and I tried to imagine how those people could feel and what they felt. I was freezing, but still I was wearing six layers; I was tired, but still when I would come home a bed with a comfortable mattress would be waiting for me; my legs were hurting but I knew that in some minutes I would go on a bus and travel home. But these people, these people were working all day, eating just soup or a piece of bread. They were coming back from work, in this freezing place and they were tired and they went to sleep on boards, not beds, boards of wood. And also if with all my force I tried at least a bit to feel what they felt, it was impossible. Such abnormal and terrible things that we can't imagine were happening in that camp and in all the camps. I think of the speech that a rabbi there gave to us, and when he, in the cold and darkness of the place said that we should be silent for one minute. But it is not fair to be silent just for one person, but we should be silent for one minute for every person who was a victim of the holocaust. But this is quite impossible, he concluded, because we should be silent for 3 years. I think that with a phrase like this everything is clear. In the end I would just like to add that this trip was a unique experience which completely will have an impact on my life and I will always remember it.
Mia Kraus - first year IB student - Slovenia

March

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