Saint Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us—and send us flowers

The Flowers in Cell 21

By Christopher T. Haley

I was in Kraków, and I knew I would go to Auschwitz sometime, but I didn’t know when. It was inevitable but unplanned—you can’t plan to visit Auschwitz like you plan to visit the Wieliczka Salt Mines. Then I was wandering around the streets of Kraków one morning and suddenly I hailed a cab. After I told the driver where I wanted to go, it was silence the whole way, over an hour from Kraków. He stopped across the street; I paid him and got out without a word—what do you say about Auschwitz?

It was silent. Not audibly silent, as there were plenty of people mulling about, and tour buses waiting with engines and air conditioners on, but physically silent. It feltsilent. What struck me more than the silence, though, was the sterility. Indeed, the place was not only sterile; it was banal: parking lots, tour buses, a clerk, gift shops. The visitor—I hesitate to say “tourist”—is accompanied to the infamous gate by large freestanding photographs of familiar political and cultural dignitaries who have visited the site. It was inappropriate, to be greeted on my way to the gravesite of millions of helpless unknowns by a gallery of the rich, famous, and powerful.

After the red carpet row of photos I stopped to collect and prepare myself, to make myself spiritually naked before I passed beneath the gate. How to walk? Should I crawl? But there was no way to crawl low enough, so I walked—that seemed better: to stand. Imagination and sympathy fail beneath the gate; only sorrow and love, both infinite, are enough. And so, in silence, I passed under.

I wanted to weep, but weeping was out of place here—not on account of reverence, not on account of horror, but because Auschwitz was more like a museum than a mausoleum. The cell blocks had been converted into first-class exhibits, complete with tour guides and multimedia installations. It was all information, all data. No one weeps at data.

The sterility was unsettling. I wanted to catch the eye of another visitor, to empathize, to find some communion in our sorrow, but everyone was distant: reading and listening, instead of feeling and grieving. But I couldn’t blame them; their demeanor was not only encouraged, but designed. Whoever put the museum together, they wanted you to know. And for good reason, of course; so I couldn’t blame them either. But I had not come here to learn some new facts: there is no amount of information that can ever come close to comprehending the tragedy of even one lost human life, much less this place.

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