I was never able to really devote myself to the in-depth study of the Shoah, even during my doctoral thesis. The fear and pain were too intense. Doubt invaded me, incomprehension gripped me, and reading the letters and reports frightened me. After consulting the archives or listening to the testimonies, I hasten to return to daily life. Likewise, the idea of visiting Auschwitz has always made me deeply anxious. I’ve only been there twice. The first, in 1985, was a quick visit to the camp, without a guide, without testimony, without any textual support. It was sunny and extremely hot that day. For twenty years I did not return to Poland. But this second trip, which particularly upset me, remains engraved in my memory. It is this experience that I wish to share.
In this text, I have gathered all my memories and I strive, with my words alone, to describe this yawning abyss. This text focuses primarily on my personal and emotional experience and I am not seeking here to give a history lesson, nor to provide a clear framework for teaching the Holocaust in a formal educational context. I just want to say what I feel deep in my soul.
A punch in the face
In November 2005, I joined a carefully supervised group of one hundred and eighty-eight people. Looking through the list of participants, I realized the size of this delegation. It included around twenty teachers from nearly twenty schools in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais, around one hundred and twenty students, representatives of the rectorate, two principals, various personalities from the regional council, elected officials from different parties, journalists , and four camp survivors: Charles Baron, Jules Fainzang, Ida Grinspan and Yvette Levy.
I had already met Charles Baron and Ida Grinspan during a television show in 2005. Their testimony had a profound impact on me. They recounted their experience with simplicity and precision, explaining what they now considered their mission: to testify tirelessly so that younger generations do not forget. I found myself in the presence of these people again. Tireless, they were endowed with a mysterious force. How could they come back to this place? Would I be able to do it in their place?
On the bus to Auschwitz, Jules Fainzang, then 82 years old, spoke up to share his story. I remember his frozen gaze, empty and hurt, but still so deeply human. He captivated attention. His testimony evoked the inhumanity and absolute horror of the camps, recounting in simple words and without hatred the suffering endured by the deportees. Fainzang meticulously described what the men had endured, how they had died. He also recounted how other men had planned these crimes with chilling precision, killing like one would kill insects, before returning to their families in the evening, playing with their children as if nothing had happened. When Jules Fainzang finished his story, a heavy and heavy silence fell on the bus, a silence of kids confronted with the unspeakable, I still remember this silence.
I wondered what the students were thinking, feeling or understanding. A conversation came to mind. What will they remember from this visit in a few years? Will they develop greater compassion, increased humanity? This trip raised so many expectations, but also fears. The fear that something will not work, that something unexpected will happen, that a student will behave badly, that the young people will be indifferent or jaded, that they will not understand the importance of the place, that we will miss our plane , that we lose time, or even that an accident occurs.
Why put such pressure on us? Where do these fears come from? And what do we hope, almost naively? Change Humanity? Transform individuals? Move them to tears?
I wanted to cry
As I finally crossed the camp grounds and walked through the scene of the crime, an indescribable pain came over me. I had warned on the bus that I was dreading this visit, but I now realized that this apprehension was even stronger than I imagined. The suffering was visceral, it knotted my stomach and oppressed me. I wanted to cry, but no tears fell. Total silence was imposed, without a word, without a tear.
An intense emotion seized me when my gaze met that of Ida Grinspan staring at the entrance to Auschwitz II Birkenau, the infamous main gatehouse of the SS, nicknamed “Gate of Death” by the prisoners. It was in the middle of the junction of the railway line and the Birkenau quay, where the SS received the convoys of Jews. What was she staring at so intently? What did she see? What was she thinking at that precise moment? I didn’t dare ask him.
-It was a day of education. We could therefore see the blocks, the tracks, the doors, the rails, the railway sidings, the collapsed ceiling of a gas chamber, the ruins of a crematorium, the interior of a crematorium, the stairs leading to a crematory, photographs taken by the SS, fragments of the camp, hair, Taleths found after the liberation of the camp, objects taken from the victims (coins, watches, spoons, mirrors, boxes, teddy bears of children), luggage, suitcases, facilities for cleaning and disinfection of clothing, clothing of children, women, men, the elderly, metal remains, latrines located in wooden barracks from Birkenau, a gallows on which prisoners were executed, an easel on which the punishment of whipping was carried out, electrified fences, a cart for transporting bodies, watchtowers, photos personal photos, family photos brought to the camp by the Jews, the windows…
It was a day of education and we took in the places, the walls, the cold. Too short a day to perfectly and completely understand all the workings of crime, the unspeakable, death and hatred.
Do the hair, the shoes, the suitcases say without saying?
What do these objects really tell us about the history of those who owned them? What do we know about them? Nothing, because they have disappeared, invisible to our eyes. Piles of shaved women’s hair, toothbrushes, prosthetics, glasses, plates. Hair without a head, glasses without a look, prosthetics without a body, empty shoes. Facing one of these windows, Jules Fainzang let his pain burst forth. I listened, shivering, constantly disturbed by the incessant flow of visitors passing through the place. No time to reflect, to understand. Frustrated, I nevertheless perceived in the eyes of the students from Nord Pas-de-Calais their horror, their sorrow, their incomprehension.
This trip, far from being useless, allowed us to see the essentials despite the lack of time. We heard what needed to be heard. We have come to understand, to know, and to bear witness again and again.
“There are no words to describe this outrage, this destruction of human beings.” However, words exist to affirm our opposition to barbarism, our determination to resist it, our desire to act as human beings. Words to shout, revolt and resist. Words to recall the silence of the world. Isn’t that, ultimately, one of the lessons of Auschwitz?
Twenty years later, the path to Auschwitz takes shape between memory and healing. Would I return to where my soul left a fragment of itself? Each step would be a silent dialogue with history, each breath a resonance of absences.
But my return would be less a journey than a meditation, less a confrontation than a reconciliation. Stop being afraid and make history.
Marc Knobel is an associate researcher at the Jonathan Institute in Brussels.
