This was a difficult post to write, please feel free to not read it.

Yesterday, we paid our respects at the sites of Auschwitz I and II (Birkenau). It was not a visit we were looking forward to. Like all reasonable people, we are horrified at the atrocities committed here in the name of unchecked hatred. So when we went on the tour, so ably delivered by a certified and very knowledgeable guide, we didn’t do so to learn more about the logistics of genocide. For us, going there was about coming as close as possible to the children, women and men that perished there under such unimaginable conditions. Personally, I believe it would have been better for the tour to tilt the scales of focus even more towards the victims and away from the grim statistics and gruesome details of the methods of the perpetrating SS.

I fully expected to be overcome by sadness, walking through the compound; a shared feeling of helplessness in the face of such monomaniacal brutality. Increasingly however, I found that emotion giving way to what probably has to be labelled as anger. Anger at the people who allowed the perverted views of the few to dictate the behaviour of the many into committing such acts. Anger at the tribalism that makes people hate other people they don’t know and who have done nothing untoward to them. Anger that we, even today in 2018, as a species, appear to not have evolved beyond the point that we can with certainty say that something like the crimes committed in Auschwitz cannot be perpetrated again.

The current climate of sowing political discord through wedge issues, to reinforce this, again, tribalism that vocal proponents advocate is a canary in the coalmine for normalizing indecency against people who are not exactly like us. Like any intrinsically unstable system that, by definition, can snowball out of control if left unchecked. It is up to us all to, every day, remember how much we all have in common and celebrate the difference and diversity that make us different. This is why we travel.