There are some places where you don’t learn history. You experience it.
Today we visited Majdanek.
Before coming to Poland, I had read about Majdanek. I’ve taught about the Holocaust for years, but there is a difference between knowing something happened and standing where it happened.
One of the first things I did was reach out and run my hand along the wood of one of the barracks. It was rough beneath my fingers, worn by decades of weather. I found myself wondering who else had touched those same boards. Who had stood there waiting? Who had leaned against that wall because there was nowhere else to go? Those questions stayed with me.
When we reached the gas chambers, I stopped.
I knew what had happened there. I’ve read about it, taught it, and talked about it with my students. But standing at that doorway was something entirely different. For a few moments, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go inside. Then I realized I hadn’t come all the way to Poland to turn away from one of the hardest parts of this history.
So I walked in.
Later, I saw the ovens.
No photograph or documentary had prepared me for that moment. Standing there made everything feel real in a way I wasn’t expecting. My stomach turned. I wasn’t ready for the weight of what I was seeing, and I needed to step outside for a few minutes before I could go on.
Finally, we gathered at the monument.
In front of us was what looked like a mound of white stones. Beneath those stones rest the ashes and fragments of bone collected after the camp was liberated. Beyond it stretched the mass graves, where those who were murdered here were laid to rest together rather than in individual graves.
Prayers were spoken. Violins filled the air. Candles flickered in the afternoon breeze.
As I looked from the candles to the mound of white stones and then across the graves, I couldn’t stop thinking about the lives behind the history. These weren’t just names in a book or numbers in a lesson. They were parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters. They laughed. They celebrated birthdays. They had family dinners. They made plans for the future, and this is where life ended.
As the music played and the prayers were offered, it didn’t feel like we were simply remembering the past.
It felt like we were honoring a promise.
That these lives mattered.
That their stories still matter.
And that we have a responsibility to make sure they are never forgotten.
Izzy Roe