Auschwitz - A top tourist destination.

It's always hard to answer when someone asks you "How was your Auschwitz experience?". 'Good' doesn't really sound very fitting, but it wasn't what I would describe as 'bad' either, even to say 'interesting' make me think I am coming across as a bit sadistic. I think, however, that it is a necessary encounter everyone should experience. It's truly shocking, if not overwhelming with its facts, figures and imagery, which you really can't prepare for. I believe it is important that everyone, at some point in there lives, goes to Auschwitz because it is important to remember what humanity truly is capable of, and even more important that we do not allow such atrocities to ever, ever, be relived. After all, Auschwitz is far from the only example of genocide, it has not stopped since then! History is there to learn from, and if we don't take the time to remember it, we won't ever truly learn from it.

As moving as the experience is however, you can never, really, truly, imagine what it must have actually been like there in the 1940s, especially visiting on such a lovely day and along side so many other tourists. When I snapped this picture though, I tried to imagine those tourists walking alongside the barracks, which really represented no more than battery hen runs, as those Jewish victims traipsing along to their imprisonment. (With the amount of complaining I heard from them, they probably imagined themselves as not that far from it, if only it were really put in perspective). I think with the bit of editing I've done to the photo, it has at least mimicked what the atmosphere might have been like.