It’s Austere
From Sam W., a senior majoring in biology: There was frost on the willows at Stutthof. Treblinka was blanketed in white. Auschwitz-Birkenau hung heavy with mist and fog. It has just begun to snow at Majdanek. These places aren’t supposed to be pretty. They are supposed to be openings to some void, pits in both the earth and the human narrative. But, somehow, they are beautiful? Lying beneath, or perhaps above, the wretched history of these sites are places, monuments, and nature so impeccably designed and borne that I dare call them idyllic. It seems so wrong, but these spaces are serene in an unsettling, paranormal way. The wind blew through Chelmno and her forests, the bells of nearby churches [...]