The numbers were clear to me.

6 million Jews─ all brutally murdered. Their voices silenced; their bodies discarded like pieces of trash tossed into a garbage can. Reciting this figure was easy. Picturing the faces of the fallen was impossible. It haunted me, following my every step.

I saw the photographs.

One in particular is engraved in my mind: an endless mound of shoes projected onto the screen of my middle school classroom. Each pair was forced off the bodies of Jews upon arrival at the concentration camps. They melded together into a vast pile of grey, soulless homes. Homes for the lives that could have been.

I felt the silence.

It seeped into the classroom like a creeping fog, filling the space and swallowing me whole. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the photograph presented on the screen. It held me in its grasp. My eyes sifted through the pile of shoes, searching for any semblance of understanding, for a sliver of life amidst the sea of loss.

“Never Again.” My teacher’s voice cut through the silence, wrenching me from my trance. Reality flooded in—the photo before me wasn’t a horror movie enjoyed from the safety of plush movie theatre seats, as my mind had secretly wished. Instead, I was staring at the stolen lives of my family. Real people. Children my age, who were robbed of their tomorrows for committing one simple crime: They were Jewish. Never Again. The words reverberated in my ears. I’d heard this phrase dozens of times throughout my Holocaust studies. The concluding line to almost every speech. I looked down shamefully at my black leather flats. I wondered what my shoes would look like in that pile.

…

Growing up, I spent the summers at a Jewish sleep-away camp. It was awesome. It’s where I met all my best friends and there was something so magical about the endless laughs we shared. They just got me. The icy showers, sweaty cabins, furry intruders in the walls, and chunky milk served at breakfast, didn’t seem all that bad when we were together. We just called that “camp charm.”

Once a summer, we would gather for a Holocaust Remembrance Day Yom HaShoah ceremony. I remember a few years ago, the whole camp came together to hear from a survivor. As I listened to him, my heart swelled with sadness. Sadness like I’d never felt before. Then, came embarrassment. I wiped my glossy eyes to realize that I was crying. A river poured down my clammy cheeks. Uncontrollable tears, I wanted them to stop. Get it together Jess. I silently scolded myself. I didn’t want anyone to see me crying. To think that I couldn’t handle the weight of our history that I’d heard so many times before. But this time it was different. I was listening to his story. Then came, comfort. I felt a gentle hand brush my back, stretching over to rest on my shoulder. It was my friend, hugging me. I turned my head to realize that the entire camp had joined in, their arms linked as we swayed from side to side. Together, we sang a prayer for the Holocaust victims, in one big hug.

…

A year ago, I bore witness to the atrocities of the Holocaust. I walked along the train tracks from Auschwitz to Birkenau. With each step, the weight of lost souls dragged me deeper into the Earth. I heard their screams in the weathered scratches etched into the brown barrack wood. I walked through the gas chamber where the Jews were once promised a ‘shower,’ only to be met with suffocating poison. I could smell their fear permeating the Zyklon-B stained floors. As I brushed my hand over the imprints their fingernails had carved into the wall, I whispered “Shalom, Goodbye.” I wanted to offer them a trace of the peace they were denied.

At Auschwitz II, I witnessed millions of the Jewish people’s belongings sitting behind a glass wall. It was the items they took with them when they weren’t told where they were going. There were heaps of what seemed like never-ending piles of glasses, kosher dishes, prayer shawls, and hair.

And then the shoes.

I stood before the mountain of loss. It was the real-life confrontation of the haunting photograph I’d seen on the projector in middle school. Only this time, I stood at the very bottom, staring up at the towering peak of death. The weight of each life seemed to stretch endlessly upwards. I felt so small. How was I going to climb this? I held my breath, bracing myself for the suffocating silence that usually followed. But this time, it was different. There was a stirring of life all around me.

The souls of the shoes were walking in the pitter-patter of footsteps of people passing by. They were crying in the stifled whimpers of those surrounding me. They were dancing in the warm embrace of my friend whom I’d met on the trip. Each pair pulsed with life, speaking to me in vibrant colors. Reminding me they are still among us, and the paths their shoes once tread will never be forgotten.

…

AL was the Holocaust survivor who accompanied my group on the trip. Hand in hand we walked from Auschwitz to Birkenau. He stood in the barracks where his parents once suffered as he told us the story of his life. He was a child survivor and moved around a dozen non-Jewish homes in hiding, while his parents were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau and murdered.

What inspires you to tell your story? This was the question my friend asked AL, the day after listening to his story in the barracks. We were sitting on the carpet of the Warsaw hotel, seeking answers. AL’s hands pressed against his temples; his eyes scanned the room. I watched as he jolted and slowly fell off the table. He hit the ground and my world turned black, drowned out by screams and the rush of people fleeing.

“AL has passed.” The three hardest words I’d ever been asked to swallow. Three words that shattered me. The thought of losing him was lodged in my throat, stifling sobs, anger, and nausea all at once. He was the survivor of our trip. The survivor. It felt like the ground beneath me had vanished. Everything I’d learned about our history up until that point felt utterly meaningless. What could I possibly know about a world without him in it?

As I struggled to find my footing, I clung to what was clear in my mind: the numbers. 6 million Jews— all brutally murdered. Reciting this figure was easy. Envisioning the faces of victims was impossible. I couldn’t imagine 6 million deaths. But I could picture one. AL.

I found solace in his life story. I like to think that AL’s spirit fell into my arms, that the memory of him landed upon my shoulders, urging me forward. He crystallized my sense of purpose, the core of my Judaism. He allowed me to understand why summer camp was so special. Because we were bound. Joined by a shared history. United by the duty to remember. To speak up for our ancestors. To speak up for AL. To march proudly for those whose footprints were cut short.

Their legacy lives on within the soles of our shoes, imprinted in

each

step

we

take.

 

Never Again is now.

 

Jessica Ages is a student writer and has recently graduated from high school. She is looking forward to attending McGill University in the fall.