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.

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.

An image of a man and a woman standing before the Selling Point part of the Rijksmuseum's exhibit "American Photography". There is a green sign that says Selling Point in the top left corner. There are 4 colourful posters on the wall, each selling a particular aspect of America. They all have the header "This is America" with the tagline "Keep it Free".

Politics everywhere, all the time

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I’m on the other side of my time in Amsterdam and Den Haag, with one day left and it’s a work day, not a tourist day. I leave for Poland on Saturday. Mostly for family and friends who are probably wondering why I’m not posting about my trip like usual on Facebook, this post includes odds and ends.