On the second day of my five-day trip to Poland with Tribe, the United Synagogue’s youth organisation, the coach was driving through a suburb when the guide interrupted our conversation “Please all look to your right-hand side. That is Majdanek.”

 
Abruptly, the houses on the right came to a halt and there before us, stretching as far as we could see, were lines of barbed wire fencing along with the rows of huts which make up the concentration camp. The camp seemed to be almost part of the suburb with several houses effectively backing on to it.

 It looked like something out of a film and when, standing gazing into a gas chamber, I reflected on that thought I realised just how unrealistic the Holocaust appears to many people. It occurred over 70 years ago and the main way to understand it is through films or facts in books. I’m unsure if we truly grasp what really occurred. 

I had always simply assumed death would be caused relatively quickly in the gas chambers. My assumption was wholly incorrect. It took 20 long, horrific minutes. The scratch marks, left by the fingers of people who clawed the walls in their pain, are evidence of the agony of the victims.

I would like to say Majdanek  was the worst place  I visited but I can’t. Belzec was a death camp where Jews were taken for only one reason — to be killed. The camp has been completely destroyed and all that remains now is a powerful memorial to those that died. 

Down the middle of a hill of rubble, a flat path was carved. As you walked down it, the rising walls of the hill created a frightening sensation of entrapment as they began to tower above you. There was no escape. However hard one tries to imagine the feelings of those walking down that path to their deaths, it is impossible.

The last day of the trip we spent in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest extermination camp run by Nazi Germany, and Auschwitz I. Accompanying us was a lady we knew as Bobby — Eva Neumann — whose family were killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau, while she survived the camp and lived to tell her haunting story. Bobby is, without any doubt in my mind, the strongest person I have met in my entire life. 

She was returning to the very place where she was put through hell in order to tell her story group of teenagers, whom she had never met before. She returned to the exact spot where she last saw her parents disappear before her. The very place where she so narrowly escaped death herself. 

What struck us was how she carried herself through the memories which came flooding back to her. She recalled her family with a smile and her witty sarcasm instantly endeared her to us, despite the gravity of the events she recounted. 

Possibly the most amazing experience of the whole trip was when, as a group, we were with Bobby as she sat “shivah”. Although this is usually observed immediately after the death of a family member, Bobby sat shivah with us there. 

In the centre of Auschwitz we stood around her and one at a time approached her and tried to say some words of condolence. Thinking of something to say was difficult. Even the rabbi, who accompanied us on the trip, had to pause for a moment, during which time Bobby looked up at him and with a mischievous grin on her face as tears rolled down her cheeks asked, “How’s my shivah going?”

As we walked out of the infamous gates of Auschwitz I later that day, we were all too aware this was a journey most Jews sent there by the Nazis would never have experienced. The rich reds and oranges of the autumn leaves which glorified the scenery made it seem almost surreal. 

The Holocaust is a historic event that cannot be conveyed just through a textbook. The mass graves of children, the abandoned synagogues, the crowded cemeteries and the other concentration camps we visited on an incredibly intense trip left me questioning how I would fare in the position of the victims, where everything that I take for granted each day was stolen from them. Consequently, I have gained a greater appreciation for life and all that is done for me. 

People may come away from such a visit with different impressions and be emotionally affected at different times but one thing is certain — it is a life-changing experience.

Alexander Kitsberg, 16, is studying for his A-levels in London