A person doesn’t visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland and come away unchanged, and I was no exception.

The empty barracks, the barbed-wire fencing, the solemn exhibits, the telltale chimneys – all these vestiges left a strong impression. But what struck me most was the sheer vastness of the sprawling memorial to history’s most notorious death camp.

Walking through Birkenau with my tour group, I gaped at the emptiness stretching for a mile in every direction – nothing but the crumbling remains of buildings half-buried in snow.

In January 2015, I traveled to Poland for the Auschwitz: Past is Present professional development program, commemorating the 70^th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau. This entire experience, was and continues to be a life changing event for me on every level personally, professionally, and academically.

Ruth Hernandez is a junior at Esperanza Academy Charter School, in Philadelphia, PA. Hernandez has been involved with USC Shoah Foundation since 2013, when her video Voices of Our Journey is the won 2013 IWitness Video Challenge.  In 2015 she traveled to Poland for the Auschwitz: Past is Present program as a junior intern. 

In January 2015, I had the incredible opportunity to travel to Poland with other students, as a junior intern, for USC Shoah Foundation’s and Discovery Education’s Auschwitz: Past is Present program, commemorating the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

As the first anniversary of my life-changing trip to Poland is upon me, I take time to reflect on the impact that trip has made on me both personally and professionally.  I have learned so much from my experiences as a teacher in USC Shoah Foundation’s and Discovery Education’s Auschwitz: The Past is Present program.

Oscar Abend describes how he made a living for himself and his family in Chicago after surviving the Holocaust.

Sarah Ditman remembers witnessing the occupation of Paris, her city of birth, when the German armed forces invaded France on June 14, 1940. She recalls with sadness that as a young woman, she watched out her window as German soldiers were marching down the Champs-Elysées.