Today on the "Oprah Winfrey Show", Oprah walked with Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, through the remnants of the major concentration camp in Poland. Watching this program conjured up all of the feelings that I experienced when I visited it last summer with my fellow WorldTeach volunteers.

Even though it is almost one year that I have visited the camp, the experience profoundly moved me, and I am still affected by it today. I am in awe of Professor Wiesel, as he, a Auschwitz survivor, was able to walk through the area where his family, and so many others, died.

The program was educational, it was good that others got a chance to see what it was like. But, it does not capture what it is like to walk around this camp, knowing that people died horrifically. First of all, the camp is large and vast (about the size of Manhattan). It is also eerily quiet, a place to honor and respect those who have died. However, I felt the souls of those who perished, almost like they were still crying.

I cried throughout my visit. I knew it was going to happen, but I am not ashamed of it. So what, if people looked at me strangely. No one mourned these individuals when they died, why can't I cry in order to honor their death?

I cried when I saw the names of individuals on their suitcases (thinking that they were being relocated to another place), seeing the pictures, seeing their shoes, their hair, and their baby clothes.

Whom have we lost by their senseless deaths? Poets, doctors, artists, lovers, mothers and fathers....Who was inhumane enough to kill these individuals? Worst of all, could I ever commit these crimes of inhumanity? Does everyone have a touch of evil within ourselves?

People should visit Auschwitz in order to remember. However, I am concerned that this is turning into a tourist site, instead of a place of reflection. It becomes another checkpoint on someone's itinerary, a "Disneyland of death"--once you see it, you can return back to your superficial lives.

After we visited Auschwitz, someone pulled me aside and said that since "he grew up reading the history, visiting the place does not affect me", as if I should be ashamed that I cried.

I DO NOT CARE WHAT HE SAYS. I am still affected by the images from the holocaust. To me, that's where the danger lies. Indifference only allows injustice to persist. People must have known what was going on, but they did not do anything about it. Where they afraid, indifferent? Unfortunately, events like the holocaust are still occurring in our world (ex. Sudan) and if we visit torture centers, read histories, and still do not feel anything, then genocide will still exist in our world.

This just makes me more committed to fight against social injustice throughout the world.

To paraphrase the ending of the show:

To those who died, we remember.
To those who survived, we hear your voice.
To the future generations, we will never forget.