08/20/2026
I walked through Oświęcim (Auschwitz) and Brzezinka (Auschwitz II-Birkenau) during my most recent visit to Poland, and there are things I saw and learned there that I don’t think I will ever be able to forget.
Approximately 1.3 million people were deported to the Auschwitz camp complex. Only about 400,000 were registered as prisoners.
The other roughly 900,000 were never registered. For the overwhelming majority, that meant they were selected for death shortly after stepping off the trains—many separated from their husbands, wives, parents and children without even realizing they were saying goodbye for the last time.
We all know what happened there. We learned about it in school. We’ve seen the photographs and documentaries and read the stories.
But standing where it actually happened is different.
Standing beside the railway tracks where the cattle cars arrived. Walking through the barracks. Seeing where families were separated. Standing on the ground where a gesture of someone’s hand could determine whether another human being lived a little longer or was sent directly to their death.
One photograph has stayed with me in particular.
It shows Jews deported from Hungary undergoing selection at Brzezinka in 1944. Among them is an elderly, gray-haired man with a cane. An SS man is directing him in one direction.
Our guide explained what that direction meant.
He was being sent toward the gas chambers.
A gesture. A few seconds. A human life decided.
Our guide also asked us to look closely at the faces in other photographs—men, women and children walking toward the gas chambers.
There was no panic.
They didn’t know.
They had been deliberately deceived. They were told they were going to shower and be disinfected before getting dressed and being assigned somewhere to live and work.
So they walked.
Parents with their children. Husbands and wives. Elderly people.
They walked calmly because they didn’t know where they were actually going.
That is something I cannot get out of my mind.
The conditions at Brzezinka were even more severe than at the main camp in Oświęcim.
Some barracks were brick and others were wooden structures originally designed as stables. They were dark, primitive and terribly overcrowded. At times, 1,000 or more prisoners could be crammed into a single barrack.
Standing beside the wooden sleeping platforms was another moment that stayed with me. Several starving and exhausted people had to share each level, and survivor accounts describe as many as nine people crowded together on one platform.
There was virtually no personal space. No privacy. No place to retreat from another human being.
Day and night, people were surrounded by hundreds of others—their bodies, voices, smells, suffering, fear and grief.
Then there were the details that somehow made everything even more real.
The thin blue-and-white striped uniforms many prisoners wore were completely inadequate for a Polish winter.
Many were given crude wooden shoes that rubbed their feet, causing blisters and wounds. Yet they still had to stand, march and work.
Some prisoners were so desperate to protect themselves from the cold that they put paper or pieces of sacks underneath their uniforms for warmth.
And they could be severely punished if they were caught.
Our guide described one punishment of 25 blows with a stick. The prisoner had to count each blow aloud in German. If they lost count, couldn’t continue or lost consciousness, the punishment could continue or begin again.
Afterward, regardless of their condition, they could still be expected to go to work.
Imagine being brutally punished simply because you were trying not to freeze.
But perhaps the most emotional moment for me came when we entered the gas chamber at Oświęcim (Auschwitz I).
We actually walked through it.
And that’s when you could see the emotion overcome people.
Some were openly crying. Others stood silently with tears streaming down their faces.
There is something very different about reading that people were murdered in a gas chamber and then physically standing inside one.
You look around that room and try to imagine hundreds of frightened human beings packed inside. You try to imagine the confusion, the crowding, the panic and eventually the realization of what was happening.
And you realize that you really can’t.
I don’t think any of us can truly comprehend what those people experienced in the final moments of their lives.
I hope no human being ever has to experience anything like it again.
And then today, something happened that made me realize this experience had followed me home.
I was standing in a very crowded airport in Warsaw, waiting to go through the formalities before my flight. People were pressed around me. Some were impatient. Some were huffing and puffing. There was noise, body heat, smells, frustration—that uncomfortable feeling of having strangers constantly in your personal space.
And suddenly, I was back in that gas chamber.
Not literally, of course. There is no comparison between my temporary inconvenience in an airport and what those people endured.
But that’s exactly what struck me.
I could leave.
I had my passport. My suitcase. My clothes. My freedom. I was going home.
They couldn’t leave.
And then I thought about the prisoners who survived the selections but lived in those overcrowded barracks.
There was no going home at the end of the day. No bedroom door to close. No quiet corner. No personal space.
Always another human body beside you.
The sounds. The smells. The fear. The crying. The sickness. The exhaustion. The emotions of hundreds of other frightened human beings surrounding you day and night.
Even the simple luxury of being alone had been taken from them.
I stood in that airport today and realized how easily we become irritated by things that, in the greater picture of life, mean absolutely nothing.
Slow Wi-Fi.
A delayed flight.
Someone standing too close.
A restaurant getting our order wrong.
Something not happening exactly when or how we wanted.
Things we allow to frustrate us and sometimes ruin an otherwise perfectly good day.
After Oświęcim and Brzezinka, they look very different to me.
A warm bed.
Food.
Clothes that keep you warm.
Shoes that don’t hurt your feet.
Privacy.
The ability to close a door and be alone.
A home to return to.
The freedom to decide where you go and when you leave.
And the ability to hug the people you love.
These aren’t little things.
They’re enormous things that most of us are fortunate enough to take for granted every single day.
I left Oświęcim and Brzezinka with a very heavy heart.
But I also left with an enormous sense of gratitude and perspective.
What happened there can never be allowed to become simply another chapter in a history book.
Because 1.3 million is a number.
But every single one of those 1.3 million was a human being.
Someone’s mother.
Someone’s father.
Someone’s child.
Someone’s husband or wife.
Someone’s brother or sister.
They had names.
They had people they loved.
They had plans for tomorrow.
And they must never be forgotten.
