Following a one hour bus ride from Krakow through modern architecture and lush Polish countryside we arrived at Auschwitz I. Walking through the iron gates that lied, “Work Will Set You Free”, I was immediately confronted with the vast visuals of the Nazi’s Final Solution to the Jewish Question. Images of the machinery of the road to death along with evidence of the over one million lives lost echoed everywhere. We shed tears over the confiscated prayer shawls, shoes, luggage and leg braces of the Nazi’s victims. My mind could not accept the detailed records kept, the harsh conditions of the prisoners and the gas chambers and crematorium. All were coldly calculated to destroy lives.
Yet, images of hope touched me. A group of students praying in the gas chamber with Israeli flags, “our” survivor Howard Chandler recounting his time in Auschwitz Birkenau as we stood in a barrack, flowers growing near a destroyed crematorium and our Classrooms Without Borders group joining in remembrance all flooded me with hope that peace can triumph.