Here There Be Ghosts

by Naomi Smith (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

I didn't expect to find Poland

Imagine being so desperate to escape your situation that you find the strength to scratch gouges deep into stone wall with nothing but your own fingernails. It sounds – and it feels – impossible, doesn’t it? It was the summer right after high school and we were all looking forward to moving on after one last group trip abroad, this time with history department. First, we headed to Berlin, Germany, for a whirlwind day trip, and then took a coach trip to Krakow, Poland, for the remainder of our time on the continent. Our time in Berlin was crazy busy as we dashed from place to place, from Checkpoint Charlie and the Holocaust Memorial to the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag, among those places. What struck me the most during our time there was the bombed out buildings left standing with their replacements built right alongside as reminders of the horrors that had come before and exhortations never to make those same mistakes again. The following day, after driving through some of the most beautiful countryside I’ve ever seen, we arrived in Krakow. For so many reasons, it’s a place that lingers in your soul long after you leave. My memories of the city are many and vibrant. Homemade chess sets in a covered market. Kabanos sausages. Watching gypsies dance and perform magic in the darkness of night. Guiding my fellow students and our teachers, who were decidedly drunk, back to our hotel. Testing the limits of teenage rebellion (and idiocy) in pretty much the most stereotypical way possible: buying vodka from a local corner shop, since we were almost they wouldn’t ask for our IDs. And… Auschwitz. Arguably the most infamous of the Nazis’ concentration and extermination camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau sits on top of a hill outside the city and at the base lies Auschwitz I, the administrative headquarters of the camp complex, which was where we started our tour. It was eerily, inappropriately sunny and bright in this surreal monument to bureaucratized savagery; the streets were incongruously pretty. As we ascended up the hill towards the infamous gates outside Auschwitz II-Birkenau, however, the clouds rolled in and it began to rain. Pathetic fallacy in action. I remember bits and pieces of the day, like snapshots of horror. Two of the older girls weeping in what I cynically assumed was performative grief. The sharp burn of accidentally inhaled ashes in a crematorium. Deep gouges in the walls of the stone huts in which the prisoners were housed, the lasting physical evidence of their desperation to escape a torturous new existence that had been cruelly, involuntarily and violently imposed upon them. I was raised in a house of atheists. Despite my ever optimistic nature (aka the bane of my mother’s existence), I was taught to be skeptical, to question everything and demand proof, and to put my faith and trust in the tangible. So I’ve never quite managed to persuade myself to believe in a spiritual realm, in higher powers or the supernatural, however hard I might wish that I could. And yet, in this physical manifestation of humanity’s very worst tendencies, it was suddenly very hard not to believe in ghosts. They were, after all, everywhere. To this day, I still can’t find the words to adequately convey the full extent of the visceral fear that seeing something like that can induce in a person. It’s incomprehensibly, indescribably horrific. Witnessing the physical scars left behind by the Nazi occupation and their persecution of anyone who didn’t fit their idea of perfection has a way of putting life in perspective in a whole new way. Auschwitz is not a tourist destination but keeping it open to the public serves an important purpose nonetheless. Humanity is capable of great horror as well as great beauty and places like this serve as reminders of that very fact. This is why we study history. To get clarity and perspective on the human experience in the hope that we don’t mess up the future to the same extent that we did the past.