This will be a difficult post to write, and to read; it was certainly a difficult day, but one we don’t regret. While planning our trip through central Europe with our friend Nicole, the three of us had agreed to tour Auschwitz while we were in Poland. Nicole arranged for a private guide who would take us through the original Auschwitz I camp in the morning, and the expanded Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp in the afternoon. The tour included a car and driver to take us from Krakow to Oświęcim, the city where the camps were formed. The drive was 70 minutes, and our driver played a documentary video showing the interview of a Soviet army photographer who was attached to one of the units that first reached Auschwitz. It was much more raw and devastating than what we had previously seen in American documentaries and films about Auschwitz. Eventually, we all had to look out the windows and simply listen to him; the photographs were horrific. We were all wondering silently whether or not we were prepared for what we were going to face.
