Death's Sunset
An essay from high school reflecting on my trip to Majdanek.
Pink, orange and yellow are not the colors of death. In fact, they are quite the opposite; they are the vibrant colors of life. So why were these majestic angels of hope and life trespassing in the cold barbed wire of death? Colors of such grandeur should be illuminating the innocence of children or love. But they were not; they decided, instead, to collaborate with the Caribbean blue painted on the walls from Zyklon-B in the gas chambers. They decided to reflect off the brick red of the ovens and swirl into the radiance of flickering memorial candles. They even decided to illuminate the benign mountain of human ash. My eyes deceived me. Should I allow hate and pain to poison my veins or should I envelop myself in Mother Nature’s calming elegance. I was trapped between the two barbed wire fences surrounding the Majdanek Death Camp.
The sun slowly set as my indecisive eyes scurried between the death camp and the bus on which I would inevitably depart. I stood, perplexed, trying to grasp a simple concept; I walked in one side and out the other. I walked through the gas chambers where the socially unacceptable were robbed of life; I walked through the barracks where the impure were stripped of their belongings; and I walked through the crematorium where non-Aryan bodies were reduced to ash. Yet my chest cavity continued to inflate and my heart maintained a deep pulse. So why not me?What god given right did I have to life that these innocent people did not? Why was I not the Jewish adolescent forced to hang his parents? Profound, convoluted questions rained from the sky and pelted my chest like bullets. My mind was a motorcycle sphere spinning with confusion and pandemonium. I drifted with the wind through the machine-gun fire of thought and soon found myself disoriented, sitting on the bus.
The warm coach became the makeshift dwelling of cold: cold hearts, cold bodies, cold minds. The only sound I could make out through my internal anarchy was the hum of the engine. Everyone, enveloped in painful incertitude, remained perfectly silent. Gradually the bullets lessened, perplexity wafted away and my blurry understanding became vivid; I am free. The victims of the Holocausthad every birthright granted to human beings taken away, every birthright that I took for granted. Their respect was ripped from their chest, synthesized into a little yellow star and spit on. Their free choice was gutted from their stomach, dropped into the gutter and washed away. Their lives were ripped apart like a morning star gashes apart flesh. Yet I was free, just like the majestic little angels of the sunset.
My angst with pink, orange and yellow ceased. I suddenly found the hostile first encounter with the little buggers one of the most profound in my life. In retrospect, my dismal disbelief when I walked into Majdanek had dissipated into the psychedelic horizon. The cotton candy pink fell to the ground yanking me from the black and white hatred of the Holocaust towards the love surrounding me; the pale orange coated everything in warmth; and the daffodil yellow meticulously painted calm on every blade of grass. In retrospect, the sunset was the most beautiful, symbolic security I had ever known. The guardian sun heroically rises every morning to keep vigil over us until it majestically sets every evening, giving us the blessing of another day.
Life remains a cryptic enigma kept deep in the vaults of our existence. Aside from my newfound responsibility of advocacy, this experience granted me insight into the matrix of life. Trivial freedoms became more important than lavish luxuries; my pursuit of happiness became a priority; and most importantly my appreciation of life, family and friends flourished into the basis of me as a person. For the first time in my life, I understood where I was going and the road to true happiness.