Going to a place like Treblinka I truly did not know what to expect. I know what happened there, I know when, but that doesn’t make you ready for it. Even the drive there was an unexpected feeling. We were around 20 minutes away from arriving when our tour guide said that the road we were driving on is where the train tracks stood many years ago. When he said that, I could just feel a pit in my stomach and I got nauseous, along with everyone else around me. It was the feeling of being in their presence, where all those people rode the train to this horrible place.
After the main roads or where the tracks were, we went into a more secluded area and everything surrounding you is just a beautiful forest. I think that is the most difficult part. You see such beauty but everything that you are looking at is just carnage, chaos, and destruction. That’s what makes you think about the prisoners perspective 80 years ago. Did they hear the birds chirp around them? Did they listen to the trees shake in the wind? Did they see all the beautiful butterflies fly around the grass? You start thinking like that and you truly feel everyone there with you.
