Auschwitz and Birkenau

It's Saturday, but yesterday I went to Auschwitz on Good Friday. It was just as memorable and life changing as I'd hoped. There is something spiritual about the day, and a chance to see the place I've read ab out, that brought a lot of things home to me. I have always had a fascination with the Holocaust and since I've been in Europe I've read a lot of history about WWII. It sounds like a rather depressing fascination, but I have a sorrow in my heart for the tragedy of the Jews, and I've always felt a strange solidarity with them. I can't seem to learn enough about that time and it stirs me deeply, fills me with sadness and anger, and makes me want to be a different person. I wasn't sure who that person was until yesterday.
I won't tell you too much of what I saw. It's impossible to explain. Eventually I will post pictures, but the pictures won't show you the smell still lingering in the air, that reminded me of fertilizer on a farm. Of course we know it doesn't come from animals. I don't have shots of the inside of the buildings, where they showed us the recovered items from the storehouses of Jewish possessions. The room full of human hair that smelled like fermaldahyde through the glass. There were many pictures of Jews arriving on trains, believing they were coming to have a better life. Most of the pictures were of Hungarian Jews. I think this isn't a coincidence. I have asked Hungarians how the Holocaust affected them. After all, thousands if not millions of Hungarians just disappeared in a few short years, never to return. Gone from the face of the earth. Synagogues stand vacant and serve as reminders of the people who just vanished. "How does it make you feel?" I ask them. "I feel fine," Hungarians respond. "But they were Hungarians, your people!" "No, no, they were Jews," they say.
Did you know that the word "Jew" is still a dirty word in Hungarian? Those who hate the prime minister will graffiti "Jew" across his forehead on posters of him. You can see this at any subway station. Why do I get the feeling that if Hitler returned to take care of the tiny miniscule Jewish population in Hungary, no one would say a word? I think they would beg him to not stop there, but take the gypsies as well. When did "Jew" cancel "Hungarian"? Who will cry for them? If no one else will claim them, I will do it. I will cry for MY people. I will be Jewish. I was grafted into Israel when I became a Christian. I became a son of Abraham. That is what Paul says, yes? I am an adopted Jew, a Christian Jew. To become like Christ is to be Jewish. I am ashamed of every time someone asked me if I was Jewish and I denied it. I want to claim that solidarity as my own, and their people as my own. I will lament their sorrows and tell my students with pride of what I am, and WANT to be. I WANT to be Jewish. I don't think Christians and Catholics quite understand the brotherhood they share, and I want to tell my Hungarians (yes, I am Hungarian and American now as well) that they are in the same family. Not all Jews are Christians, but all Christians are adopted Jews. So why do so many still hate them?
I am not American first and Hungarian second, or Christian before Jewish. All of these are equal parts of me, and now I have a greater understanding of who I am. I can't wait to tell my students I am Jewish, even if adopted as one, and watch their horror and shock. I want to teach them love and acceptance. I want to introduce them to gypsies and have them make sandwiches for the homeless. I have a greater sense of identity and purpose since I visited Auschwitz. I will be a Hungarian Jew and speak for all my people who were lost, and hope to teach those within my educating grasp how to love all people.