Visiting Death Camps as told by Jannah

Greetings all! We made it to Skoczów safe and sound! (minus a random nose bleed of course). Today has been a wild ride. We started off at H20, which is a place of ministry that I would describe as a parent organization of smaller organizations that reaches out to the young Polish community. This morning we all woke up, we had breakfast, a meeting, some free time, another meeting and then the Timberwood team, as well as a couple of other teams we met at H20, left to visit Auschwitz and Birkenau. I believe the best word we could collectively come up with from the experience was ‘sobering.’ We chose this adjective partly because we aren’t really knowledgeable of many synonyms (lol) and because that was simply the one emotion/feeling we all felt collectively. I overheard Kyle (one of the leaders that is a part of this endeavor) mention how he didn’t feel right with himself taking pictures in some places that people were allowed to take pictures during the tour. That got me to wonder, how could someone have so much hatred towards a race or religion that they would take such elaborate and destructive actions to remove what they did not see eye to eye on? Off of that, while we were taking a tour of Auschwitz, we came to the point where they had saved some original items from the actual event. They were all safely stowed away behind glass and as you approached to look inside you would see a reflection of yourself. That just reminded me that we are all a part of the same race that did such an unspeakable thing to its own race (the human race), furthermore that we have the potential to do it again. That was very interesting to me since at one of the meetings I mentioned earlier we were also placed in front of some mirrors to face ourselves. I have a feeling like this will be repeated theme coming up during this trip and I am anxiously awaiting the opportunity to face myself again and learn from my mistakes.

                                                                        As always,

                                                                        Jannah