This is a long-overdue journal about my trip to Poland last July 2016. There's so much to write about to unload my heart, and to bring to recollection all the lessons of that pilgrimage.
I begin with Auschwitz.
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"Arbeit macht frei"means "work sets you free".
This appears on the entrance of Auschwitz,
and other labour camps. (c. July 2016) |
I was able to visit the WWII German Nazi Concentration camps, Auschwitz I, and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, located near the industrial town of Oswiecim in Poland, during the Days in the Diocese prior to the World Youth Days in Krakow. It was a most poignant experience, walking on its grounds, touching the barbed-wire fences, taking a peek inside the gas chambers, and seeing first-hand where millions of innocent lives perished. There was a moment I recall when I passed by the Auschwitz gallows ~ I tried to envision myself present in that period of World War II, and wondered how I would have met death had I been one of the prisoners. I could not fathom the cruelty and brutality of the Nazis. The horrifying atrocities of the Holocaust was too much to bear, let alone imagine.
