For me the most stunning aspect of a visit to Auschwitz is the huge size of the camps. It really gives you a sense of the scale of the tragedy just walking from one end of Auschwitz II-Birkenau to the other.
“For me the most stunning aspect of a visit to Auschwitz is the huge size of the camps. It really gives you a sense of the scale of the tragedy just walking from one end of Auschwitz II-Birkenau to the other.”
I have never been there, but a couple friends have. And they said the same thing: The immense size of the place just left them stunned. That was the word they both used: “Stunned.” And they didn’t know each other, and, as far as I know, never met each other. I just thought it was interesting that they both used the same word, and that both of them, in slightly different ways, said there is no word or sords to accurately describe the enormity of the thing (the place and what went on there). One of them, a woman in her forties when she went there, said she started shaking uncontrollably as she stood near one of the buildings, as if she had been dipped into an ice cold vat (she went there in the summer). I remember her saying there was not a sound to be heard, just the whisper of a breeze.