Auschwitz-birkenau Pt.2

In Pt. 1, I introduced photographs of Auschwitz with a few short paragraphs. I wrote about my inconsistent attempts to write and the frustration I feel at my own lack of discipline. I acknowledged how limiting this is, underscoring the double challenge of my current loss for words and my choice to engage with difficult subject matter anyways. I made a declaration: that these photographs were not taken for my pleasure. (Truly how could documenting Auschwitz be pleasurable?). I also explained that half of the roll of film suffered multiple mishaps, including dark vignetting due to a bent lens and major light leaks due to a popped-open panel. I described these flaws as living wounds and then I called the series of images an aesthetic offering— not expanding much on either idea. Now I re-read that language and think, “How very theology student of me.”. Good. As I’ve considered what to say in Pt. 2, I find it helpful to reference the initial, rambling announcement I made of my visit to Auschwitz. I was nervous to possess photographic evidence of the camp, let alone to share it. I still feel that way. Because I’m not being assigned to write about the camp, and there are no parameters for my expressions, I’m not sure how to approach this content. The context of every scene displayed in these images is already thoroughly explained online. Google Auschwitz and you’ll find thousands of videos, articles, periodicals, books, blogs, and documentaries about the camp. Expand the search to “The Holocaust” or “World War II” and your results increase by a percentage I can’t offer or even fathom.

First, I tried numbering the photos and providing brief descriptions. Then I remembered that numbers were tattooed on prisoners’ arms and eerily labeled outside every building on site. Not good. I tried doing some research and drafting a more academic journal, highlighting cross-disciplinary findings. Then I felt that was distracting. Too heady and not embodied enough to exist alongside the photos. So, I tried opening the post with a word-for-word entry from my personal journal, dated just a week after my visit to the camp. But as I poured over my past thoughts and tried to input them here, I found everything to be a cliche. Totally understandable. I had to say, at that time, what so many have already said. I needed to get it out, to relay the vastness of what I saw and my inability to grasp it, my terror, my numbness, my privilege to even be there after the fact—as just another tourist. Only two things I penned startled me and feel worth mentioning now.

One, that 24 hours prior to being in Krakow and then Oświęcim (the town associated with Auschwitz), I had been in the Dublin airport setting off for Poland. Actually, setting off on a three week trek across multiple European countries with some of my close friends. Poland was our first stop. While waiting at our gate, we received news of the Covenant school shooting in Nashville. Three adults were dead. Three children were dead. That was all anybody knew.

Two, that I opened and closed my journal entry on Auschwitz with statements about food. Food. Without hesitating, I had recounted our journey to Auschwitz by feeling out its bookends…which happened to be mealtimes. I suppose that makes sense—we hopped on the bus around noon and arrived back to Krakow’s city centre by about seven o’clock. The page reads, “We grabbed sandwiches and then jumped on the bus.”. “When we got back, we ate burgers and then went straight to sleep.”. I chronologically began and ended my writing, like my day, with breaks for food. Not even noteworthy, local food. Just fuel.

Honestly, I find the number of normal, nondescript things I did on that day a little absurd. I woke up. I ate. I explored. I ate. I rode in routine transportation towards a former death camp, I saw it, and then I ate. I talked with friends. I talked with strangers. I nourished and moved in my body. I just lived in my body.

I’m not trying to be glib. In fact, I expected to be emotionally rocked by Auschwitz. The shock of the Covenant school shooting was still heavy upon me. Bits of information had made their way to us overnight and into the next morning. My friends and I were disturbed. Sitting on those red velvet seats of the public bus taking us out to Oświęcim, much of what we pondered silently and discussed among ourselves had to do with Covenant, with the friends of friends and families from our home neighborhoods whom we knew heaved in grief. I wondered if Auschwitz would be even more unbearable given the horror we were feeling on a very localized level. I assumed I’d be a mess in the camp, crying mournfully, making connections between mass genocide and loss of innocent life just the day before.

I was wrong.

The horror of Auschwitz was so vast in scale, and so unimaginably gruesome, that my brain completely disassociated the wretched place of bloodshed I walked around from the freshly blood-stained hallways of Covenant school. There was no way to consider both at the same time. It’s not that I felt clinically disassociated from all my surroundings and/or feelings, like a ghost floating through physical space. In fact, I was consumed by what was directly in front of me: hair, uniforms, gas cans, barracks, brick chimneys…and I’ll be honest…the piles of stuff, the signage, the buildings, and the curated materials left less of an imprint on me than what was naturally occurring during the hours I was there. The chirping of birds. The shifting patterns of light and weather. The jostling of strangers in tight quarters. The body language of my friends. I remember being engrossed by the strangeness of cleanly swept, completely empty rooms and outdoors, freshly mowed grass. The sounds of distant cars drifted over Auschwitz’ dominating fences and the babbling sounds of small children floated down internal corridors.

Recalling these subtle and organic occurrences is made easier by looking at the photos I took. It was illegal to photograph the various, disturbing objects on display, and I chose not to photograph certain rooms or chambers when there was no clarification or when it seemed improper. Most materialistic subject matter was off limits. So, without omitting characteristic features of Auschwitz (the main gate, chimneys, the “Halt!” sign), I documented my journey through the camp’s interior by being as vague as possible, by cooperating with what was before me rather than assuming a narrative I hadn’t experienced. Perhaps that’s why the camp appeared so tranquil through my lens. I had no real way of re-injecting the atmosphere with that vile energy which once filled it. I had no real way of re-asserting what had happened there.

I only had my little camera, little nuances of light and shadow, little changes in expression at every turn.

I only had what I could hold and what I felt, which was an unexpected sense of responsibility: a responsibility for every step I took, for every interaction I had with another human on the premises. A responsibility to be fully there and also to be fully honest: beauty had taken up a mysterious occupancy on that previously (and probably still) wretched plot of land.