Another angle, with the green house with a brown roof is shown on the right. To the left, a shed with a brown roof can be seen. In front, you can see a placard that forms a part of an outdoor exhibit about Aktion Reinhard. The placard is multi-sided, and the visible sides show a map of the General Government as well as an image of Jewish people being rounded up for deportation.

The green house at Sobibór

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Sobibór is a disquieting place, tethered in the present day to an evolving duty to commemorate the upwards of 180,000 Jewish people who were murdered here. My interest was captured by how unsettlingly close people currently lived to the death camp site. More specifically, by this green house. To say this house has bad vibes is a severe understatement. I knew the house was one of the remaining few traces of the camp before I went. I did not know it was presently occupied by a private owner. That was a startling realization. Why in the hell would anyone chose to live there?

A concrete bathtub, tilted on a concrete slab, is shown against concrete walls.

Majdanek, and the weather

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This place seems so entirely other as to be an impossibility. This should be an impossible place.

It isn’t, though, right? It’s a well preserved place, yes, and it serves the role of standing in for countless places of horror that mark our shared history, back to the beginning, and aren’t around anymore. There surely aren’t enough sadists to account for the bloody record written on this earth. There are that many people.

“Here lies a human being”, Treblinka.

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Treblinka was the first tour I went on where I saw the camps through the victims. This is strange, I know, but I’m trying for stark honesty in this blog. I have always centred victims in my reading, but that is easier when you can reach for a poem, or a memoir, or a history text at will. At the other places, I was focused on abstractions too much. reblinka I knew more about going in, including stories about some of the people who were killed there. And we had a gift of a tour guide who paused frequently for us to reflect, to spend time “seeing”, and answered endless question after question allowing us to turn a 3 hour tour into 4.5 hours.

Bełżec, and the numbers

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You can take in the expanse without moving your eyes much if you stand in the right spot. I got caught in the idea that you should not be able to grasp in a one glance a space where this many people were killed, and where their ashes now lay in 33 mass graves.

A sturdy stone wall made of irregularly shaped stones, showcasing a natural and weathered appearance.

Kazimierz Dolny

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There seems to be no space in Poland untouched by the genocide. In Kazimierz Dolny, there are echos and traces.