Dear Friends,

I finally made the trip to Auschwitz today, and felt an urgent need to write it all down for I don't want to forget any of what I experienced today. Bear with me as I unload on you.

I started my tour in Auschwitz One where political prisoners mostly, were kept. Now, the many red brick barracks are a museum. I walked under the infamous sign --- translated, Work Shall Set You Free, one of the numerous stupid Nazi slogans used in the Holocaust.

I walked for a few meters and was feeling alright, like maybe I could do this.
Then I smelled something acrid in the air. A man stood beside one of the barracks. I approached him asking if he spoke English.
Yes, he did.
" What is that awful odor in the air?"
"What odor?" he asked.
" Its hard to explain," I said, and asked if he could smell it.  He shook his head, and in the gentlest voice I ever heard he said, " Perhaps its a special scent for you, yes?"
I nodded yes, and thanked him. I turned away so he wouldn't see my tears but he was busy wiping snow from his granny glasses.

Leaving the kind man and entering a barrack, I wiped away more tears. It seemed fine to quietly cry here, I wasn't the only one. The piles of hair, suitcases, and shoes taken from the murdered Jews were unreal. Photos of prisoners lined the hallways. I stared into their eyes, realizing they were real people living sixty years ago in civilized Europe. I wandered through the row of barracks and more scents assaulted my senses. They would last thirty seconds and then disappear. Once, I smelled burning hair. I turned away from the spot and it disappeared. I returned, it recurred.

I paused in my typing. This email wasn't the time to share the Hebrew letters. The signs outside each barrack explaining its history were in three languages; Polish, English and Hebrew. I gasped when I recognized the Hebrew letters, but I would explain later.