(Jewish Group) How are you supposed to feel when you visit a concentration camp?

It is surprisingly easy to forget that you are at Auschwitz.

The day after this year’s March of the Living, during which I was one of some 2,500 people who walked the two miles from Auschwitz to Birkenau, I returned to the former concentration camp for a guided tour. It was a beautiful spring day: the sun was warm, the grass was green and the scent of spring blossoms was pervasive as we gathered as a group next to the infamous train tracks.

The gravity of the place only hit me when our guide, Dima, began speaking: “First of all, there would have been no grass here during the time the camp was active. It all would have been eaten.”

The present and the past constantly vied for my attention. Walking with fellow participants, I might be chatting idly, only to realize I was passing through a tunnel of barbed wire. Our group ate a picnic lunch of chicken cutlet sandwiches within sight of a crematorium and the home of the former commander of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss.

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