General Discussion

I will agree, to some extent, with the other poster. There is a difference between the two places. The main part of Auschwitz is more "sterile". My family and I had tour guides for both places. We went to Dachau first and it was only my family and a private guide. It is a dark place, even though it was very sunny the day we went. I stepped into the grounds and had a panic attack. A quick hit off a vape (which is not allowed, and I got yelled at in German) and a special gummy, and I balanced out. There are some places that to this day I could describe in great detail as if I went yesterday. Dachau was/is the embodiment of hopelessness. Seeing the first gas chamber was jarring and I avoided looking at it as much as I could, so I went into the "stalls" not realizing they were the prototypes of "the showers". There are still fingernail marks in the walls.

Auschwitz was a group tour. What made it so hard was how frivolous some treated the experience, including making "choking sounds" in the gas chambers, feigning being electrocuted by the fence, and acting as if shot on the killing grounds where they lined-up people and shot them. That was more upsetting than the grounds. It was also a dark, dreary day. Some of the people who acted like assholes, broke down in tears as they passed through the mountains of suitcases, glasses, and shoes. I fully admit I was an asshole to one woman who had pretended to be electrocuted when she cried at the shoes and I said in my broken, almost forgotten Italian, "What? You don't find this funny anymore?"

Auschwitz was very large, but it was Birkenau that almost did me in. Standing on the tracks going into the gate, looking at the lone cattle car, and then going up in the guard tower and looking down over the entire camp; I almost passed out.

The comparisons to the Holocaust, especially in regard to action by Israel is so fucking offensive, but it is unsurprising how many on the left don't give two shits. The right is filled with deniers and minimizers, the left with very few of those types, but they do exist. The left is more about USING the Holocaust as a cudgel against Israel and Jews. The PROFOUND ignorance of The Holocaust by many of the left is jarring, and it isn't just gentiles. The Holocaust is going the way of slavery, that is to say, it is used in such a way that the severity of it, the inhumanity of it, is lessened, and even made into a joke.

I can understand why your late wife would not want to go and perhaps why you don't; but, if the opportunity arises, I would recommend it. It is through those visits, those tours, those sights, the memory lives on. Sadly, it needs to live on as a reality, not a weapon.

Thanks.

ETA: I agree it was a good decision for the Poles NOT to think about arresting a JEW on their territory, especially given the reason he would have been there and those who approve, it says something about them too.