I am not resigned.

Almost a month ago, the entire Calvin group travelled to Poland for four cold and rainy days filled with history. We spent several days in Krakow, touring the city with a local guide and learning just a small fragment of Poland's complex history over the past centuries and most recent decades. It was incredible to learn about the realities of life in Poland during the Nazi occupation in WWII. As we walked through Krakow's misty and dripping streets, we came upon a giant red-brick building where over 180 university professors and academics were arrested and later sent to concentration camps. Walking down those cobblestoned streets made history come alive and become concrete. It was incredible to learn the raw statistics of the age. Before the war began, hundreds of thousands of Jews called Krakow home. Today, decades after the ravages of the Nazis, only 100 Jews remain in Krakow.

On Saturday morning, we travelled an hour and a half ouside of Krakow to Auschwitz/Birkeneau. Our experience at Auschwitz is indescribable. When we initially arrived, I was struck by the "touristyness" of the whole thing. Giant groups of high school students and tour buses and crowds of picture-takers lined the entry-way of the museum, speaking loudly and laughing. I longed for perfect silence and sombre attention.

As I walked in the rain and cold across Birkenau’s barren landscape, I could not help but feel anger, frustration, heartache and sorrow for all those lives lost, all those freedoms shattered. I’ve known about the realities of the Holocaust since I was very small. And yet, even with all the information, the statistics and various details of the time shoved into my brain, standing before the ruins of the crematoria shattered my world. I can’t get those images out of my mind. I can’t go one day without thinking about the long, straight tracks which run down the center of Birkenau, their only purpose to glide innocent men, women and children to towards death. The most inconceivable human cruelties have become history’s reality. That day, Jordan and I discussed how the word "unbelievable" has taken on a completely new meaning since walking along the gravel-lined lanes of Auschwitz.

In Italy, several weeks later, I purchased a book of selected poems. One of them cries out as gruesomely appropriate after my experience in Poland.

Dirge Without Music

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in
     the hard ground.

So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned

With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.

Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.

A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,

A formula, a phrase remains, -- but the best is lost.

The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter,

     the love, -

They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant

     and curled

Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do

     not approve.

More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses

     in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;

Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.

I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.