The weather is perfect. A breeze sends the leaves dancing and the branches clattering together like bony fingers. I love autumn.

But there is a sadness here that permeates all the beauty. The trees that grow so lush and thick hide the crematorium’s towers from view. My soul is screaming in agony for my people. 6 million of them and 5 million others.

My great grandparents died here, and so did my great aunts and uncles. Only my grandmother survived, but she refused to speak about the horrors until I was “old enough”. She cried the whole time she spoke:

“Train tracks normally mean a journey. Excitement. But these ones mean death. They bring the cattle cars right into the camps to make the process even faster. It takes time to wipe out a nation.

Some didn’t even make it to the high, barbed wire fences. They died, and we had to sit with their bodies for days, sometimes propped up against them in the stifling heat. My uncle was one of them, but I only found out after.

Their hate makes the Earth bitter, and nothing grows. It’s all mud. All grey. Or maybe that’s the way my mind remembers it. There was grass and forest around the camp, but not inside. No life could survive with so much evil. There was so little food and less hope than that.

I don’t know why I survived when my family did not. I do know how. The guards thought I was beautiful and they called me to dance for them at night. I danced while my parents and siblings and neighbours and friends perished from disease and gas. I will live with that guilt forever. “

The tour guide leads us through another gate and another. I see ghosts. Gaunt faces and shaved heads and walking skeletons. The inside of this gas chamber is scratched from the nails of people who struggled to the end. Most of us break down crying.

I have never felt closer to my people- to my own family, in fact. When I go home I’m gonna visit nonna and tell her all about this trip. I’ll bring her some flowers too. She could never get enough of those. She’ll be my first stop on my return, if the cemetery is open when I get back.