I went to Poland thinking I knew what I was going to see. The images of Auschwitz and Auschwitz II-Birkenau are everywhere. You grow up with them, whether that is in school, online, or just through conversations in the community. The gates, the tracks, the barracks. So when I arrived, it did not feel like I was seeing something completely new. That sounds strange to say, but it is true. I could picture it before I got there. And that was what stayed with me most. It was what I couldn’t see.
Being there was obviously difficult, though not always in the way I expected. The physical spaces were heavy, but they were also familiar in a way I had not anticipated. What affected me more were the things that weren’t in front of me. The stories we heard, the testimonies we listened to, and the gaps where something should have been but wasn’t. It is easy to think that being there will make everything clearer, but in some ways it does the opposite. You leave with more questions than answers, trying to make sense of something that doesn’t fully make sense.
That feeling was strongest at Treblinka. Unlike Auschwitz, there is almost nothing there. No buildings, nothing to walk through, just stones marking where things once stood. It is quiet in a way that feels deliberate. You are not being shown anything, you are being asked to imagine it. And that is much harder. One thing we heard there has stayed with me more than anything else. The Nazis built a petting zoo at Treblinka for their own wellbeing. After a day of killing Jews, they needed something to relax. Even writing that feels surreal. It is the kind of detail that you almost want to question, because it sounds impossible. But it is real, and it forces you to confront something uncomfortable. They understood exactly what they were doing. They were capable of thinking about comfort and care, just not for the people they were killing. That contradiction is difficult to sit with, and in some ways harder to process than anything physical we saw.
That same tension appeared in Krakow. We stood by part of what used to be the ghetto wall. Right next to it was a playground. Children were running around, playing, completely unaware of what that wall had once meant. It was such a normal scene, and that is what made it feel strange. Unlike Treblinka, this was not a place that had been erased. The wall was still there, but it had become part of everyday life. People walked past it, children played beside it, and unless you knew what it was, you could easily miss it. Standing there, it felt like two completely different realities existing in the same place. One grounded in history that feels almost impossible to comprehend, the other in normal life carrying on. Of course life continues, but there was something about that contrast that stuck with me. It made me think about how easily something so significant can fade into the background.
That idea followed through into the march itself. On Tuesday, we walked between Auschwitz and Birkenau as part of March of the Living. Thousands of people from all over the world, walking together along a route that once meant something completely different. It is described as a march of remembrance, which it is, but it also feels like something else. You are not seeing what happened there. You are walking in a place where something happened, knowing that most of it is no longer visible. What you see instead is what remains. Survivors walking with us. People singing. A sense of life in a place that was meant to be defined by death. At one point, we were walking with Martin, one of the survivors, and had to speed up to keep up with him. It was a small moment, but it stayed with me because of what it represented.
I was fortunate enough to be on the same trip as my mum, although we were on different buses, which meant we experienced it quite differently. On my bus, there was a real mix of perspectives. Some people had been before, some had never been. Some came with strong personal connections, others with what they had learned in school. Some people cried, some did not, and no one reacted in exactly the same way. What mattered was that we were able to talk about it. To sit with those differences and try to understand them. There was no right way to respond, and I think that is important.
What stayed with me most is more than what I saw. It’s what I have now heard and carry with me. Our generation will soon be the last to hear these stories directly from survivors. That means for future generations it is our responsibility; meaning now we have to listen. It sits in the conversations we had, the testimonies we listened to, and the way we choose to remember them. At some point, these stories will no longer be told first-hand. When that happens, it will be up to us to make sure they are still understood, still told properly, and still felt in the way they deserve to be. That is what this experience left me with.
March of the Living is more than a memorial of the past. It is about seeing survivors walk alongside us, still telling their stories, still living their lives and understanding what that means for my future.
Lottie Cannon is 22 years old and a student at the University of Amsterdam
To get more from opinion, click here to sign up for our free Editor's Picks newsletter.