People pass through so quickly forgotten: here and gone.  James and I, together on the bus to Auschwitz, mostly stayed nearby as we walked through.  They gave us headsets, and our guide’s voice led us; we could hear her cough or clear her throat or whisper a small comment, all magnified in our ears.  Someone’s phone went off and she admonished in a stern voice.  Some people were snapping pictures but I couldn’t.  This wasn’t a building or a vista or a river spreading out.  I won’t forget what I see, need no reminder.  In certain places, she said –no pictures allowed –out of respect.  That room that contained all the hair behind glass.  Later James told me that people still held up their phones, like crowding around the Mona Lisa, let me see! while up ahead our guide had already passed through into another room.  Why they would want to, what drove them to capture that?  People lost.

They did the same in the gas chamber, tilting their cameras upwards to get pictures of the openings where the gas came in, or the ovens in the next room.  I wanted to shout: Put your fucking cameras down! but I didn’t.  I should have –especially here.  In this place.

After we returned to Krakow, there was time for James and me to get coffee before he proceeded to the Salt Mines, but I didn’t suggest it.  I wanted to be alone.

The dried roses on the bunks in the barracks, the haunted faces I’d seen; the room of pots and pans, cooking utensils, the detritus of ordinary lives.