Dear ones, a few days off in the middle of the week, during school term time, would have been absolutely unthinkable for our children and us just a few years ago. Our twins fought like tinkers, they were the same height, weight and strength for a long time and so we had to fight it out every day for years to see who was the higher-ranking one.
Not infrequently, these fights led to such physical altercations that a neighbour’s child no longer wanted to visit us because he found it so irritating. So the competition between the two of them was really fierce and the topic of sibling disputes dominated our lives.Especially in times of coronavirus, when the children simply couldn’t avoid each other. They had the same schoolwork, but couldn’t sit in the same room with it because it would immediately escalate.
Simply going away for a weekend as parents, as we had done once a year with the children in the early years, was simply not an option because we couldn’t put up with the fighting from either a babysitter or the grandparents.
At around 14, however, these fights stopped. Of course, there are still conflicts here and there, but on the whole they have somehow found their place since then. And if there is ever a disagreement, nowadays it is usually resolved verbally or with a door slam instead of hurting each other.
The two of them are now 16 and the last two years with them have basically been the quietest of our lives, pure relief, „just like family life!“ we often say. Everyone had warned us about puberty, but for us other phases were much, much, much more stressful. We also had a sister who was two years older and we didn’t want her to get lost in all the noise.
Storm-free for the boys, educational trip for the older one
At some point, our big girl, almost 19 years old, said that she would like to make up for the school trip to the concentration camp Auschwitz Birkenau that had been cancelled due to corona. We parents had both been there before and were able to tell her in advance what she could expect. She was interested and at some point we said: Okay, we’ll do it during your term break. Her boyfriend was also interested and so we set off for Poland last Thursday evening.
We were all very relaxed in advance, I didn’t even pack my bag until 20 minutes before we left, that was because I ended up having a mum-doesn’t-want-to-be-starving fit and pre-cooked loads of meals – and then we were through the door.
The next morning we rang at half past six to see if the alarm clock had worked for school at home and were greeted with a cheery „Hello, Poland!“. So everything seemed to be going well at home and so, after an extensive breakfast, we set off from Krakow to the memorial.
Important for all those who are also considering this for themselves: Admission is free, but you still need a ticket (which can also be booked online) and will be given timeslots to sort out the crowds a little – simply so that there aren’t too many inside at once. There are two camps, with a free bus travelling back and forth between them. The first one with the well-known entrance gate is quite spacious, we started there, the sun was shining and you could look into individual blocks and, above all, imagine in your head what horrors happened here.
We saw people in leggings, we saw people with sunglasses, we saw people affected, we saw groups of young people and large groups of Jewish people, we heard snippets of speech from all the world’s languages, it was a quiet, almost gentle atmosphere of remembrance. It was good that there was plenty of space, that it was possible to move when it got too much.
We then drove to camp two, where the house of Nazi commander Rudolf Höss is located, which was made famous by the film „The Zone of Interest“ (with an outstanding Sandra Hüller in the leading role, the film won several awards). The infamous slogan „Arbeit macht frei“ is also emblazoned across the path with its perfidious message. Remnants were on display in the various houses.
Thousands of shoes from the people brought to the camp, hundreds of suitcases, a huge mountain of spectacles, a shelf full of children’s shoes.
When the bus took us back to the first camp afterwards, we were the only ones on board, the sun was already setting, there weren’t many people left on the road and so we managed to take this photo, which I could sit in front of for hours because it makes the horror so vivid, because it shows light where there was so much darkness.
We drove back to Krakow, we phoned our friends back home who were still out and about with friends in the next biggest town after football training, we went to the sky bar of a hotel, from the terrace of which you could look out onto a flashing Ferris wheel that gave the feeling of „everything keeps turning“.
And then we went back very early on Saturday morning. So early, in fact, that the twins were still asleep when we arrived. They had locked the door and weren’t having a storm party, the used plates on the coffee table just showed us that the gentlemen had probably had their fill while we were away. They hardly noticed that we hadn’t been there, they said when we woke up. We were able to tell each other all the things we had experienced… so intense, so good. #neverforget
And then it was back to the football pitch and the horse and the student job as if nothing had happened. Impressive.
