By: Ben Brandeis
Faces stare. The eyes follow. They look into your soul with bleak faces and lost hope. These are the faces of the dead which line the corridors of a building at Auschwitz. They are all shaven and tired looking as if they had been kept awake for weeks by haunting nightmares. These people gaze at you as you move from one room of horror to another. Rooms of hair, rooms of glasses, rooms of suitcases, and rooms of shoes all appear to scream desperately “we belong to someone, can you help us find them?” in the quiet rooms. But there is one room that brings life to this horrendous story of the holocaust. Projections of videos containing faces, people, families and friends light a dark room as their memories are displayed to the viewer. I cannot help but want to give each and every man woman and child a hug. A long and uninterrupted hug with no words and when we release, I yearn to tell them the sweetest of lies: “everything will be ok.” This was the aura of Auschwitz, an ever present haunting of those who came before and suffered here. The shock factor was great for everyone and it was very emotional for many.