By: Ben Brandeis
The grass swayed back and fourth, a vibrant sea of green in a peaceful valley. This valley, located just north of the picturesque town of Lublin, is flooded with a never ceasing onslaught of crows which appear to emulate the raven in Poe’s work “The Raven” and cry “nevermore” as they sail from the barbed wire fences to the guard towers. Why they seem to cry this is not understandable until the viewer is jolted to the reality that this place is the Majdanek Concentration Camp, in which over 100,000 human beings were not killed – they were executed. These crows know not what their presence invokes in the minds of mankind. They cannot possibly know that they represent death and loss and depression and more than anything, hopelessness to all that gaze upon them. We feel this way about them because of many stories, but in reality, we feel this sadness because they exist in much the same way that the Jewish people were loathed by the Nazis for merely existing. The Jews knew not what they did to deserve to lose everything and then, only when they were destitute of all but life, be executed. So we stare at this place with utter serenity and utter depression. The monument at the entranceway to the camp seemed weightless compared to the burden born by all prisoners who fought for survival at this camp and now us: the witnesses. There was a moment of silence that engulfed us all at that moment. There was a new sense of solidarity and resolve amongst our group as we ventured into the hell, for now extinguished, of Majdanek to hopelessly search for meaning amongst the facilities of execution. Each of us found a part of ourselves we did not know in that search, whether it was hate, anger, deep sadness, or emptiness. The truth is that humanity is in many ways, powerless to objectify its actions. I say with certainty that no language thus founded has words that can carry the weight of those 120,000 souls forsaken in that place. So we marched on quietly through to expose ourselves to the past and to ensure that we would never let ourselves or the world forget what had happened here.