I had decided to spend my vacation far from home. Single, free, no attachments. A suggestion from friends pushed me toward Poland — a land of contradictions, history, and political shadows.
I drove there, as always. Visas ready, routes planned, borders calculated.
At the first Czechoslovak checkpoint, six women worked in the same office. I joked with them — young, bold, unstoppable — and within an hour they were hosting me for three days. The director’s office became my bedroom. The bathroom was outside, between the border columns. Every guard shift change meant hiding under the bed. We laughed like kids out of college. A strange, chaotic success.
Then I left for Poland.
Zakopane welcomed me with mountains, chilly air, and easy to befriend. Kalinka, the waitress, sat at my table, curious, intense, already imagining a future I did not want. When I left the city, she tried everything — even claiming she was pregnant. Impossible. I left anyway.
Lodz was my next stop — 1.5 million people, industry, noise, life. I stayed forty‑five days. Among many encounters, one stood out: Marika. Three years older, bank employee, dominant, difficult, magnetic. A relationship full of conflict and attraction.
I asked her to arrange a visit to Auschwitz — the German name for Oswiecim. I wanted to see it with my own eyes.
We left at dawn. Three and a half hours of rough roads, unpredictable drivers, and silence.
At the camp, a crowd. Above us, black crows circling. A guide told me the legend: they were the damned souls of German soldiers, condemned to guard the place forever.
Because of the crowd, they split us into diverse groups. Marika went one way, I went another.
I walked alone. In silence. Listening to what was not there anymore — the cries, the fear, the cold, the hunger, the mothers, the children, the gas chambers, the wooden bunks, the shaved hair, the gold teeth, the striped uniforms. Everything was still there. Everything was still speaking.
Three hours inside. Three hours of history hitting you without mercy.
When I came out, Marika saw my face. She did not expect that reaction. She could not measure my sensitivity. I was destroyed. I asked to skip lunch. It was not the moment.
The drive back was silent. No comments. No explanations. Atrocities do not need interpretation — only rejection.
Over 1.5 million dead. Few escaped. Only 1,200 saved by Oskar Schindler.
When I returned to Italy, I carried everything with me. And forty years later, I still have not forgotten.
Because at the entrance of the camp, the Poles wrote one sentence on a stone: Everything has been left exactly as the Germans abandoned it — so that humanity will never forget.
Nando
