Birkenau

July 2, 2017 by joachim

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Birkenenau in German means a “meadow of birch trees,” just as Weidenau, the name of my home town, means a “meadow of willows.”  Both conjure a beautiful, peaceful scene.  But Birkenau, the bigger one of two Auschwitz camps created by the Nazis, is the most gruesome opposite of peace and serenity one could imagine.

A German by birth, I always dreaded being confronted with the physical reality of the Holocaust even though I was just 5 years old when the war was over.  Now, as a 76-year old, a one-day 62-mile “bicycle ride for the living” from Auschwitz to Krakow finally brought me to the murderous place.

I took what I saw in silence, as many of the visitors around me.  Just as Adorno noted, “Nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben ist barbarisch” — to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric — words failed me, or they seemed so petty in the face of the remnants of crime of such magnitude.

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