Oregon Humanities

Planting Seeds in Auschwitz

My freshman year in college, I stumbled into a class on the Holocaust, and four months later, I stepped off a bus in Auschwitz with a dozen classmates, my professor, and a living, breathing survivor of the Nazi camp. This might seem like an incredible journey, but really until I was standing in Auschwitz, the journey had been fairly easy. I read books, I watched films, I cried, and I had found myself hurt and angry at a history that wasn’t mine. But angry and hurt weren’t a surprise—this was the Holocaust. This is what I was supposed to feel.

As I walked through the camp, as our survivor brought us to his barrack, as I watched people all around me break away to cry, I found myself facing something I did not expect. Auschwitz wasn’t the unsightly, run-down place you saw in black and white photographs, but a beautiful, sweeping village of brick houses with green grass and tall trees. I found myself marveling at those trees, and I quickly felt myself becoming ill from anger. I couldn’t imagine who would want to plant trees and grass here, who would have the audacity to try and make this place beautiful.

I wanted to know who planted those trees more than I wanted to know anything else that entire semester, and as we walked, I caught up with our survivor, Irving, and asked, quietly, if he remembered the trees from when he was a prisoner. I remember Irving’s face as I finished my question, confused and blank, the way he stopped walking, looked skyward, and finally answered simply “I don’t know.” This upset me more, and I found myself cornering a guide near the execution wall. When I asked my question she gave me a long, good stare.

“The prisoners planted them,” she said matter-of-factly, “during the war.”

The guide walked away, into a building, and the rest of the tour group followed her, but I found that my own feet wouldn’t, or couldn’t, follow. I stayed outside under one of those tall, thin trees that stretched skyward.

I spent a long time thinking about those trees. And even though since then I’ve discovered that their story is much more complicated (that some have been replanted, that a few were there beforehand, that their purpose is a bit morally questionable), in that moment I was forced to confront the only thing I knew—these beautiful trees were planted by the same people who suffered and possibly died here. This place was made beautiful by their actions.

I walked away from this experience with an outlook on the Holocaust that often surprises, and sometimes confuses, people. I had read the books, watched the films, even walked the barracks, and yet anger and hurt weren’t the emotions that now colored my experience. Instead it was hope—hope that by our actions, we can take even the most devastating of circumstances, even the most terrifying experiences, and we can grow from them. That we can plant seeds for future generations, and hope that society learns from these horrors and continuously struggles onward. And upward.

Today, when I want to respond with anger or malice towards a situation, I often find myself thinking of those trees. We can each make an impact, plant seeds, share stories. And in the end, maybe others will look at our actions and be shocked at what we created out of terror, confusion, and pain. But the key, for me, is to remember to create, to grow, and to hope, even when that seems like the most unlikely course of action.

About Jennie Seidewand

Jennie Seidewand is the intern extraordinaire at Oregon Humanities.

11 March 2010 | Posted by Jennie Seidewand in Inside O. Hm. New Ideas
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