'We have been warned'

From the very moment you step off of the bus, cruel ironies are painfully prevalent.

The only colour in a place of grey,  stems from the natural. A rainbow of leaves, luscious greens, bright oranges, rustic reds act as either a thin ceiling separating us and them from the harshness of the glaring sun, or else the brittle carpet where they dragged their fatigued feet, eventually becoming a coffin where their weary malnourished bodies met their end.

An assiduous reminder of the cyclic health of nature, at an epoch where they were plucked from their extraordinarily ordinary lives simply for believing.

Recent preservation developments ensure that  blood red fire extinguishers and emerald green emergency exits greet you in every haunted house on the premises, the institution reminding you that there is an entitlement to leave here safely, decades too late.

As if alluding to the indubitable fact that "the world wasn't built for humans" in stomps the trampling feet of the average tourist, delighted to be here, another destination ticked off the bucket list. Will you take a picture of me underneath the Arbeit Macht Frei sign? Which snapchat picture makes me look more cultured, the sculpture of the starving women and children or the shooting wall, five children to one bullet? Which Pokemon have you found here? Look there's one beside the chambers! People who are one step away from buying " I heart Auschwitz-Birkenau " t-shirts for the relatives they left at home.

Amidst all the ignorance and the fact that you paid to go to a place where innocent civilian's nightmares and realities went hand in hand, there is a tacit, underlying tone that oozes across Auschwitz-Birkenau.

One of desperation.

Pleading people to be aware of puddles of racism which so quickly swell to tsunamis.

Begging the present to learn from history’s mistakes.

Asking for forgiveness for the twisted misinterpretation of the law and German.

I can only hope that my choice of law and German as a degree will prepare me to help rid the world of similar monstrosities and needless deaths. For it was essentiality a pernicious understanding of the law which allowed for the conscious annihilation of countless lives. And although no legal system is perfect, and people are more often flawed than not, Auschwitz-Birkenau felt like the breakdown of everything I have come to know through studying and through basic morals. It shows the power of interpretation and what can happen when that power is voted into the wrong hands.

Like a knife, the law can be used as a fatal tool or a weapon.

We have been warned.