Madiha (D), 15 years old, writes:

Satur­day, 14.10.2017:

“Sobi­bor. In retro­s­pect, there is so much behind this word that I will never be able to express.

In Sobi­bór there was no museum, no exhi­bi­tion, which should show us pic­tures. There was only us and the remains. It was up to us to get an idea.

We were alre­ady in the middle of it when we got off the bus, you could see the ramp. You saw the place where thousands of people got out and thought they would take a break and drive to a con­cen­tra­tion camp, but they did not know that they would never come back. They were told to drop their valu­ab­les in the bar­racks so not­hing would be lost. They go on, hus­band and wife sepa­ra­ted. The women are get their hair shaved off for “hygie­nic” rea­sons. The men arrive directly in the bar­racks, where they had to und­ress. “Put ever­y­thing down so you can find it later,” they hear that sen­tence, not­hing more than a lie, just empty words.

They enter the alle­ged way to the “shower cabins”, which tur­ned out as gas cham­ber. Unlike other camps, they are not gasi­fied with car­bon mon­oxide or Zyklon B, but with exhaust fumes, which does not mat­ter to me any­more. The only thing I can think of is that they ran blindly to death. Maybe they were even gra­te­ful to the Nazis for taking a shower. As we wal­ked the path where pos­si­bly the “Him­mel­fahrts­straße” was, the way to the gas cham­bers, I could not feel anything. It was not like I felt empty, not even for that I was able to. We arri­ved at the gas cham­ber, where only one chim­ney was left, but that was not what I noti­ced. What made brea­t­hing dif­fi­cult for me. It was the sea of ​​sto­nes in the back­ground. A white sea of ​​sto­nes, the mass grave. For the second time this week I am aware of the mass. I know num­bers, they were men­tio­ned in the movie, they are known from books, texts. But I was never aware of the mass.

The dis­tance was gone. We kept going, the cere­mony for the 74th anni­versary of the pri­so­ner upri­sing began. I could not con­cen­trate on the words, I only saw the sto­nes. Quite a lot of white sto­nes. Are these per­haps so many sto­nes, how many people were mur­de­red here? Sud­denly I heard that the Dutch and Ger­man groups should step for­ward to read out the names of the Jews from their home­town. The Dutch star­ted giving so many names. I did not star­ted to see the mass as a mass, if you look clo­sely, not every stone has the same shape too.

I should start with an intro­duc­tory sen­tence, at the begin­ning I thought it was just a sen­tence, but when it was my turn, I found it hard. I was afraid to speak. Not because I could say some­thing wrong, no it was some­thing else. I do not know what. But Jessi was stan­ding on my left, she had just read the names of her rela­ti­ves. She stood in the place where her great-grandparents were mur­de­red. She did it. When she gave me the micro­phone, she even smi­led at me.That gave me cou­rage and I smi­led back. 

It was just about being there for each other. We have not known each other for very long, but I feel a cer­tain amount of fel­lowship, which strengt­hens me enor­mously. Alone, I would not have made it through the day. 

Live and tell. Even if it is hard to find back in your ever­y­day life, you have to and then tell others. Even if we only tell it to a few, we have reached a lot.”

 

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