The other week, I went on a school trip. This is not your typical school trip to New York or Washington D.C; rather it was a trip to Poland, a country with one of the most tragic histories. Of course, the trip was filled with tears, but to simply cry about the past without taking any lessons from it for the future would be a wasted experience. For that reason, I am writing what I have taken from my visit to Poland.
As I walked on the train tracks that led into the Auschwitz concentration camp, an unforgettable thought crossed my mind: I was walking on the same tracks that led my great grandparents to a life of calamity.
Standing on the soil where atrocious acts against Jews were committed troubled me. I asked myself a very tough question. The question I asked was not how people survived, it was why. What could possibly make a life so traumatized worth living?
After seeing Auschwitz II, we visited Auschwitz I, where I got the answer to my question. In Auschwitz I they have rooms that display the belongings of the Jews who were brought there. One of the displays was a huge pile of shoes. These were not just any shoes, these were shoes of children. I was quickly reminded of my three-year-old niece, Katie, and that is when I got my answer: they survived for us.
They survived because they saw a future that would come from them. A future of scientists, doctors, lawyers, philosophers, engineers, artists, actors, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, sisters, and brothers who would learn from the pain their ancestors suffered and in effect, make the world a better place.
Joseph Hier is a senior at YULA Boys High School in Los Angeles.
