Today marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in Poland. It’s unreal to think about, honestly. The world vowed ‘Never Again’, after the genocide and mass murder of millions. It’s a sobering experience to walk the same path that a million others walked, many never making it out of the camp.
I visited Auschwitz in the summer of 2009, when doing a semester in Poland studying the holocaust and national identity. It’s interesting how many themes I studied nearly twenty years ago are, once again, running through news headlines.
What does this have to do with my journey as an author and historian? A concentration camp lit the fire in me asking why? Why did it happen? Why did people allow it to happen? As an eleven-year-old, I walked through the remnants of Dachau, the concentration camp near Munich. It left a lasting impression. I wanted to know the reasoning behind it. That led me down a path of not only trying to understand better what led to the holocaust and the happenings of the world during that time, but also, to tell the stories of those who could no longer speak. Telling the stories of people from all walks of life, who lost their lives during the holocaust became my first (and very important) mission in my life, and at such a young age.
My experience visiting both Dachau and Auschwitz, and many other sites throughout Europe, pushed the question of what would have happened if Hitler had won. What would life be like?I never expected that as I finished the first half of the story that the world would be on the precipice of a battle between what is right and world leaders who have taken notes from Hitler’s playbook.
On this anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I must beg us all to remember what was done. We must never forget the millions that lost their lives, but we also must remember the stories of those that survived.