Yesterday was a long day. It started off in Prague at 5:45 am Friday, local time. (Which was 8:45 pm Thursday, Pacific Time.)

Starting from the Prague airport, we then went through Frankfurt, San Francisco, and finally, Los Angeles, where we arrived at about 8:00pm last night (Friday night). So, after over 20 hours of traveling, we were about 30 feet or so from the exit door in the United Terminal at LAX, which in this case is near an entry point for passenger screening. Suddenly, we heard a shout from the security screening folks: "Code Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!" and three of them took off running after someone. Immediately, the police and other TSA/DHS folks started shouting at everyone in the vicinity, "Freeze! Freeze! Do not move!" When someone with a gun yells, "Freeze!" even if they are not pointing it at you, it is typically in your best interests to comply. So we did.

We were so close to the exit door that I could have thrown my shoulder bag and hit it, but there we were, frozen. I had visions of the terminal being shut down for hours while they pursued someone, and although it seems that in such case we probably would have been let go in short order, I had all sorts of worst-case scenarios running through my mind for the three or four minutes we stood there. Then, they sounded the "all clear," (we still don't know what happened) and then we were through the door and back into the City of the Angels.

For the past two weeks, we had been in Europe, on an organized tour, primarily in Poland, Hungary, Austria, and the Czech Republic--specifically, Warsaw, Krakow, Budapest, Vienna, and Prague. I have all sorts of fodder for blog entries from the trip, but today I will just mention the most compelling and memorable part of the trip--the day trip to Auschwitz and Birkenau (aka Auschwitz II) while we were staying in Krakow.

I wish I could adequately put the emotions into words; here's a stab at it:

Many people who visit Auschwitz have an moment during the visit that hits them over the head with scope of the tragedy. For some, it is the suitcase of a four year-old on display with thousands of other suitcases that were meticulously labeled with names and birthdates of folks who had not the slightest idea that they were about to be exterminated--they thought they were going to a work camp. For others, the moment is walking through the gas chamber. I didn't think I would have such a moment--the whole place is just so overwhelming--until we came upon a memorial for several people who had been killed in a perfect example of the Nazi methods. Apparently, there was an escape or attempted escape by a couple people in a work detail, and as a punishment/deterrent, the Nazis decided they would pick several random people and kill them. So they did.

It was not so much the randomness of the killings (about which Holly just reminded me of the details) but rather the names on the board that did it for me. The two names that stuck out were Wozniak and Sikorsky. It immediately made me think of the potential companies like Apple and Sikorsky (helicopters) that were never developed because of the Nazis. It was a profoundly stirring reminder of the minds and spirits and potential achievements (and achievements of potential descendants who would never be born) that were snuffed out.

Our tour guide pointed out that "no one sees Auschwitz for the first time." And he is right, I think. We have all seen so many images of it over the years that when I finally visited, there was a haunting, overwhelming familiarity about the place that I could practically feel in my bones. I wish I could tell you that someone in my family was one of the liberators, but I can't. However, my grandma told me once that her brother, my great-uncle Norman, was a war-crimes prosecutor at Nuremberg.

The effects of the holocaust reverberate down through decades and generations. Poland, particularly southern Poland, once home to a large and generally thriving Jewish population, is practically devoid of Jewish people today. In all of southern Poland, there is one active synagogue, and it has only 163 members, according to our guide at the Holocaust Remembrance Museum in Krakow.

But I am told that anti-Semitism in Poland now is rare too: the synagogue has no security--no need, I was told, and no need for security at Krakow's Holocaust Remembrance Museum, either. That's sadly different than what we can say for the Museum of Tolerance in LA, and several US synagogues I have been to, all with active and substantial security. Some people might say that the lack of Jewish population in the area is the cause of the lack of anti-Semitism, but I will opt for the more optimistic cause: enlightenment and understanding. Pehaps it's a bit of all of the above.

Also in Krakow, we got to see Otto Schindler's Factory. Mr. Schindler was a mench in the deepest sense, but did you know that he fled to South America after the war because he was afraid he would be unfairly persecuted? (I can't remember if they touched on that in "Schindler's List.") It wasn't until people that Schindler saved started testifying on his behalf that he came back to Europe.

After seeing Auschwitz and Birkenau, I feel like something has changed in me, but can't put my finger on it. Loss of innocence? No, I wasn't innocent before I went to Auschwitz. Becoming aware of the depths of the Nazi's inhumanity? No, I knew about the atrocities, and read extensively about the extermination camps, and had been to holocaust museums and seen survivors speak, all before I went to Auschwitz.

No, it was something else. It perhaps is simply that I took a piece of Auschwitz and Birkenau with me in my heart and in my mind; a piece that cannot be taken without being there. I shall never be quite the same again.