Hitler's Little Gifts

From Denmark to Greece, Holland to Russia . . . no shtetl was left alone.
Wherever we travel the 'presents' that the Germans (and their helpers) bequeathed to the world can be found. Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno . . .
Majdanik, Ninth Fort, Odessa Massacre, Paneriai . . .
The ABC's of European History . . .

When I tell people that I'm in Poland, they're surprised.
When I tell them that I haven't yet been to Auschwitz -there often taken a little aback . . .
It's not that I won't go -when the chance arrives I will (G-d willing it won't -Moshiach will be here)

It's merely that I'm not running there . . .

Dusk in Hell -picture from my trip to Majdanik

Why?
That's what I ask as well -but for a different reason.
Why will I go?
The question if I should go has an easy answer -You must. The harder question is why must I?

If it's to comprehend, to get feel of the Holocaust . . . that is to ask the impossible. We can not understand what is beyond the grasps of own existence. The will of the Infinite G-d can not be explained in letters fathomed by the finite mind.
If then it is to comprehend that I can not understand, that I am facing a matter that is such great tragedy that I can not truly grasp it . . . that I did when I went to Majdanik, to the mass graves in Warsaw, Vilna, and Kovno.
I've heard that March of the Living doesn't give a breakfast on the day that they visit Auschwitz -perhaps then one should go to feel the pain of those who were murdered.
That, however, would be naive . . . to think that I can in anyway relive the agony of a death camp.

Is it to pay respect to those who died? To me it seems the most fitting . . . yet there too I have questions. Should one go out of the way to visit every single place of resting for those who had none in the last few days, months, or years of their lives? That would be a journey to almost every shtetl in eastern Europe, where a ghetto, a mass grave, a pogrom could be found . . .

Perhaps then I will go because I can not understand . . .
A Jew by his very nature is above logic, my connection to my fellows who were killed is the same.
I will go because I am a Jew . . .