Shoes. Everything leads back to the shoes in our minds today as we walked through Majdanek. To walk through each room and think that someone stayed, rested or bathed in this place, gives a new realization to the situation. Since the first step into the new destination, there was such a different atmosphere. It did not have a sense of rememberance of the people that passed as other places have, but instead the auora was somewhat disturbing.
There was a building that was used for “disinfection” which hit people to the core when we walked where the prisoners walked and saw what those people felt. However, the room with the shoes spoke volumes. Being in the other rooms, we see what happened to them, but in the room with the shoes, it hit us: someone walked in these shoes and every pair of shoes belonged to a singular person with their own story. That means that in that room, everyone’s individual story was smothered and put to an end. And to imagine that if we walked in their shoes, would we be strong to carry on as they did? In today’s world, will we pass down the story and the history of the Holocaust?