Comfort in the Cracks
From ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Earth has a unbelievable ability to both nurture and relinquish life. We see and experience this never ending cycle of creation and destruction play out in many forms. The water that flows downstream must return to the clouds, a mountain surrenders its size and becomes sand, humans take a first breath and so shall they breathe a final gasp. These are the unspoken, infinite laws of the universe. I’ve carried these unwritten rules with me to every memorial I’ve seen on our journey through Germany in an effort to comfort myself.
Visiting the train tracks at Track 17, the bandstand at Zeppelin Field, and the former concentration camp Sachsenhausen is enough to make anyone feel a deep-rooted fear for humanity. The fact that human beings are capable of such atrocities as mass genocide is barbaric. Remembering the countless lives, history, and tradition lost in these places remains to be the most overwhelming ordeal I’ve ever experienced. How do you come to terms with a country that set out to slaughter millions of people? A country that stood together as a united front to commit a true “crime against humanity”.
If this trip has taught me anything at all it is to find comfort in the cracks.
Staring at the tracks at Track 17 you’ll notice the quantity and destination of those who were deported. As I peered down at the ghostly railway I found tiny flowers peeking through the iron platform, growing unexpectedly and undisturbed in abundance at my feet. When your eyes turn to the wooden planks they also gaze upon the trees sprouting from the Earth. Nature pushing her way through disaster to crack, uproot, and purify this space. Standing atop the bandstand at Zeppelin Field you’ll find that the stones where Nazis once sat and insinuated riots have cracked. Weeds push through the surface as nature reclaims this space as her own. Standing on the stones in Sachsenhausen you’ll discover a barren wasteland over the fence where the universe is erasing the labor camp one root at a time. A never ending cycle of beauty forcing its way through the hurt.
As I get ready to begin my journey home, I can only feel solace in the fact that Mother Nature will eventually take back what’s hers long after humanity has gone. Regardless of what anyone has to say about it, regardless of how much money is spent to preserve it, and regardless of how much hate still lingers in our world, the environment will reclaim it.
There is nothing more comforting than these infinite cycles of change, nothing more important than remembrance, and nothing more holy than flowers growing through stone. It is with this in mind that I leave the monuments to crack beneath my feet and make way for a better tomorrow.
Lexie Beauchamp lives in Louisville, KY.