Arbeit Macht Frei

You aren’t going to describe your experience at Auschwitz?

Why should I try? I don’t have the right words or emotions to attempt to describe the atrocities of this genocide, let alone the authority to.

Still, don’t you think that you, as a writer, should at least attempt to use words to convey the emotions that you personally experience during your visit?

It was claustrophobic, it was haunting, it was agitating, and it was too immense to mentally grasp in any one thought. Is that good enough?

I suppose. But why not try to use some more dramatic language?

Because this location is not about me. It’s not about how serious-sounding words I can come up with to describe my three hour visit to this death camp. Human lives were dragged here. Human lives were destroyed here. They deserve more than dramatic, flowery language. At the end of the day, human life is simple: we are alive, we feel and think; hurt and love. That’s the simple truth of it.

If it was really that indescribable… perhaps you can describe how can we prevent it from happening again?

Can we? I mean, can we really? In order to do that we need to be vigilant. We need to be on guard, not just as an individual, nor a country: but as a world. The price of liberty is constant vigilance (working) against those who would rob it from us. To use the Nazi phrase in bitter irony… Arbeit Macht Frei.

Work Sets You Free