The way Györ - Auswichtz - Czestochowa

From Györ, we travelled to Auswichtz on the 24th of July. It was a very strong experience for all of us, and the encounter with the concentration camps of Auswichtz and Birkenau left us all lost for words to adequately describe what we witnessed. It was a day of silence and contemplation before one of the strongest signs of just how barbaric human nature can become when it allows itself to fall beneath the spell of different and dangerous ideologies. Although in many ways it cannot be said that a visit to Auswichtz is an enjoyable experience, it is one that probably should be obligatory for as many as possible. Only by seeing the site and hearing firsthand of the atrocities committed there can all people be strengthened in their resolve to never allow such evil to be prevalent in the world ever again. Even today there is the danger of people committing evil by following blindly prevalent ideologies, thus it is important to have seen many young people witness such evil, question the reasons why, and to hear them say “Never again”.

Fortunately, we finished our time in Auswichtz with the Eucharist in the parish of St Maximilian Kolbe, who was a sign of the presence of God in the midst of this inhumane reality. He, like so many other people, refused to allow himself to be robbed of his dignity or of his hope. In the interior of the parish Church there is a three piece work of art in which St Maximilian raises Jesus on a cross that projects its shadow on the ground, and this takes place before the view of all of the prisoners of the concentration camp that are surrounding the scene. Jesus is covered by a striped cloth that is in the same pattern as those worn by the prisoners. Pictured below are the chimneys of the gas chambers and the Nazi crematoriums thus is a very strong image of Jesus identifying himself with the victims of those horrors. It is a very impactful work of art of which we spent a long time on our knees pondering a way to understand how God may view this grim stage of our human history. We left Auswichtz very moved from all we experienced but also with our hope in God’s redemptive grace for humanity still intact.

From Auswichtz we travelled by bus to Czestochowa. It was there that we officially ended our Verbum Dei youth encounter with the Eucharist in the sanctuary of Our Lady of JasnaGora. We entrusted to the Virgin Mary all of the fruits of our encounter, and asked her to intercede for us in receiving the gifts of fidelity and perseverance. We trust that with her guidance that all that we received will take root in our lives, and we all promised to construct together a more fraternal world – the world which God wants for humanity, and one to which he has called each one of us to be a part of as his children.