Riding in a Mercedes to Auschwitz

Riding in a Mercedes bus to Auschwitz. The world has come full circle. Today has been the most emotional day for me so far on the trip. We stopped in the morning to briefly see Schindler's Factory which still operates as a factory but now has a brand new adjacent museum attached to it. After that we began the 1.5 hour drive to Auschwitz Birkenau. The first site we visited was Birkenau. Two very important people, Leo, who spoke at our classes and miraculously survived several camps and his lovely wife, who been traveling with us the whole trip, were with us at Auschwitz I & II. Leo spent the end of the war in Birkenau death camp. No one survived this camp, maybe 1 in 1,000 or 5,000. It is a miracle that he is with us today and a blessing to be in his presence. I spent most of my time in Birkanau in a blur of tears and anger. The sky cried with me. The camp is enormous and we were led through long introspective walks across railway and ruin. I cannot recall a time of more emotion, maybe my Grandmothers funeral, although that was just a time of morning, this was alot more complex. The camp is as horrific as you can imagine, but completely unrealistic to human comprehension. Leo made the experience disturbingly vivid. Grass was mud, toilet pits useless as starving humans don't defecate but once a week or less, the feces pits off in the valley were used to produce manure from human excrement. As in Manjanek, fragments of human bone from the Nazis murderers could be found sprinkled around the ponds. Ponds designated for the disposal of human remains after skeletons from the crematoriums were pulverized with machine labor. Many of the buildings and all the crematoriums were in ruin but left as authentic reminders of how utterly disturbed the world can become when intellect, evil and obedience are aligned with a party of motivated humans. I cried, I burned with rage and pain, then cried some more. It rained. A man from Canada asked our group for help to read the kaddish. I couldn't control my emotions and had no desire to hide my tears. To Aushwitz. What has been done with Aushwitz since the Holocaust is an atrocity in itself which I have no satisfactory explanation. Aushwitz has been transformed and refurbished into nothing more then a Museum. It is shameful and an absolute desecration to the survivors, murdered victims who's remains and anguish reside there and the world at large that wishes to be a living memorial to the atrocities of The Holocaust, an event like no other in all of human history. Every building is scrubbed, painting, refurbished, fabricated with maps and artifacts behind plates of glass. Poland has turned the site into a MET or MOMA of Holocaust education and remembrance. It is impossible to feel any connection to this site on an emotional or spiritual level. Build a museum in Warsaw or across the street, Poland has destroyed solemn ground and put up a parking lot. I am so mad I wanted to tear the place apart, bust open locked doors, shatter the stupid audio devices on the floor. Auschwitz is not a business venture, tourist attraction, educational center or some institution to house a museum collection. Shame on those of you who chose this fate, I hope your descendants turn your grave site into an art exhibition dedicated to sad faced clowns