More than any other experience, my trip to Poland's various Nazi death camps has been the most significant for my spiritual growth. It was there I learned about the nature of the dark side of humanity. It was there I learned that there is no such thing as a monster person who is responsible for evil - it is within all of us because it is the dark side of "humanity", not just a couple bad eggs. But it is easier and lazier to believe that if we can kill an evil-doer off, then maybe the holocaust wouldn’t happen again, right?
But genocide has happened again and continues to happen. The holocaust was not an isolated incident, but a significant one for me, a Jew, to learn from.
I've visited several work camps and death camps in my life - Germany's Dachau and Poland's Aufschwitz-Birkenau-, but my most profound experience was at a death camp called Majdanek right outside the Catholic city of Lublin in Poland.
It was in Majdanek that I learned about “Harvest Day”, when 18,000 people were killed—not in gas chambers, but by shooting. That is roughly 12 people a minute for 24 hours straight. Again: that is roughly 12 people a minute. For 24 hours straight.
It was here in Majdanek that I visited one of the original barracks - one that was not cleaned up for tourists. It had been roughly turned into a museum-like hall of fame and shame. I saw a display with two Nazi uniforms on mannequins that looked so real I shivered. The emblem upon their hats and belts frightened me: a skull and crossbones. I became angry and my urge was to spit, to spit upon the glass that encased these faceless officers. “How could I be so disrespectful to the exhibit?” I thought and so ran outside to clear my palate.
In the same barrack I saw a picture of Heinrich Himmler—the man who gave orders to establish the death camps. But he didn’t have horns. In fact, before I read the description of the framed photograph that said his name, I gazed upon his face and thought to myself that a man with so much love in his eyes might be one of the “righteous gentiles” – those who hid Jews and other victims of the war. I became so enraged when I found out who he was that I did not know what to do with my anger. I could not direct it towards the Nazis because they were humans - just humans - I had seen love in his face, hadn't I?
I was angry at all of humanity’s dark side. Why are we given the power to be so destructive? I was deeply confronted with my own dark side-- hadn't I just wanted to spit upon a museum exhibit? In fact, hadn't I wanted to murder those officers? I potentially have the power to be destructive - with the rage I was feeling, I could have broken the case and torn the uniforms off the mannequins.
I had wanted to simply hate the Nazis - to go to Poland and shuck my head from side to side muttering "Never Again", the common phrase adorning the entrances of many holocaust memorials and title pages of Jewish literature dedicated to the time of WWII. I certainly did not expect to look upon a Nazi and see love in his eyes.

This experience taught me that there is no one out there to blame. The Holocaust was an atrocious period and I am grateful for the opportunity to be a witness to the remains and to meet and hear stories from the mouths of the survivors. I learned that to fully love myself and others, I need continue exploring my own dark side, to tell the truth about where I hate. I believe that my unwillingness to acknowledge it and tell the truth about causes it to leak out in more hostile ways; sarcastic jokes, hurtful comments.
I believe that the more humanity can *tell* the truth about our dark side, the less likely we will leak it out in ways that are destructive to each other.