Journal Entry II

I still feel that I between the flooding and the Hamburg trip, I haven't had time to fully process everything we saw at Sachenhausen.  The last 4 days have been unrelenting each in their own different ways.  That being said, there are many impressions I got while there that I'm sure will form more fully even as I write this.  For that reason, I'm mostly I'm going to talk about the Sachenhausen part of the week.

The first, strongest thing that I felt there was the sense of hallowedness that I had on some level expected.  I have dozens of photos from other places we've been.  I have three from that place.  I know others have felt the same, and the few pictures I did take almost felt wrong when I was taking them, and I found that I had to explain to myself that it will be important to show people what it was like when I get home, and that's why it was okay to take a small amount of photos.  It's an entirely different kind of documentation, even though we were still essentially tourists.  It's not about showing people what a good time you had and what you got to experience, it's almost more about teaching, or sharing a little of what it felt like to be there; to stand in a place where five hundred people were made to stand until dead in winter.

This is why selfies feel unthinkable for most of us in a place like that, and why when we see people taking them we become angry or at least uncomfortable.  It's the wrong kind of tourism.  The kind that becomes about the person and not the place.

After the tour, I stayed behind.  I felt like I would probably never come here again, and it felt wrong on some level to leave because of the weather; the people there during the 30s and 40s had suffered so much more than I would during 45 minutes in the rain.  I completely respect and understand the decisions of other people to leave, but I would have felt wrong, even if I had been the only one who wanted to stay (thankfully I wasn't).

So I stayed and walked to the far side of the triangular wall and outside of it to the foundation of the gas chambers and crematorium.  I considered taking a photo of the statue here, but decided against it.  Photos, especially from a phone, never really show the full impact of a place, and I thought it would feel very wrong to try to show that place to anyone in that way.  As though it cheapen it or detract from it or represent it poorly.  The impact isn't from anything you see, it's just from being there.  Again there was this feeling of the primary concern being documenting for others because, looking back now, that was and is the only way I can justify photos of something like that.  It wasn't particularly different from the rest of the camp, where atrocities were also committed, but it felt different because of the cultural and historical factors in how we remember The Gas Chambers, and the way that we avoid even saying the words sometimes when describing them.  I have caught myself doing it and I've heard others on this trip doing it.  We find other ways, sometimes, to get across what we're talking about, and once it's understood what we're talking about we use other words to reference it again:  Them, the foundations, the chambers.  Even, 'the showers', when said with air-quotes and a disgusted expression is more acceptable to speak than The Gas Chambers, sometimes.  It's not something you think about when you're speaking, this little avoidance, but for me it comes up unexpectedly when talking about it and maybe I pause a little, confused, before going on.

On the way back, once the rain and wind had really picked up again, we began to run.  We were entirely soaked by now and really didn't care in how big of a pool we went through.  We ran directly through ankle-deep or higher water and both found ourselves looking up or turning back over our shoulders and laughing at eachother.  Somehow, it didn't feel wrong now, though I thought it should, and even smiling had felt wrong earlier.  I guess on some level it was that there had been no joke made, no comment said that had been intentionally or unintentionally funny.  I think it is that, a joke or funny comment, and not the laughing itself, that is what really makes us uncomfortable laughing in places like that.  But we were just laughing from the stress and absurdity of running through this place in the storm and that felt more or less okay then.  It almost felt good in a way that I can't fully describe.

I don't think I'll ever go back there, but I am extremely glad that I went, and that I stayed.