Upon walking through the front entrance, you are immediately bombarded with feelings of fear, tension and anxiety. You feel it in your gut. Like going into a dark alley in the wrong part of town, you really shouldn't be there. Then you notice something else. When one is outside of the camp, the birds are chirping and people are talking. Once you walk through the gate, there is dead silence. The sound of the wind offers little to break the tension. It was incredibly creepy. There were birds all around but none of them where chirping. It's like they knew what happened there. The uneasiness only gets worse the further you pace into the camp. It is worst when you stumble upon the crematoriums and the mass graves. Again, you are instantly stricken with an overwhelming sensation of anxiety, sadness and fear. The only thing I can compare it to is the fear you experience during a fight-or-flight episode; but you can't move, and it doesn't go away. To try and get a sense of what they felt, I walked into the execution pit and looked up and the people walking by. Blank, expressionless faces with a black, overcast sky behind them. This must have been what many saw in their last seconds of life. There is so much evil there; so much evil that even 65 years later, it still cripples and overwhelms all who cross that gate. I have always wanted to visit one of those camps. Now that I have, I'm a little afraid of going back to one.
The title of this post translates to, "We must never forget".
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