On this trip to Birkenau the sky has been difficult to understand. Lots of big clouds, but today there was a rainbow over Birkenau. A rainbow. I don’t think I can say more than that. Earlier, while in the Women’s Camp B1A, I was searching for the section of the camp built by women deported from Western Europe in the summer and fall of 1942. They were the first women to arrive in Birkenau. Esther Fersztenfeld, the teenager I’m writing about, was among them. She arrived on convoy 34 from France and survived about six weeks, dying on October 28, 1942. Auschwitz-Birkenau is hard to understand; the landscape is difficult to read. I thought I would come once, but this is my sixth trip.
Rainbow over Birkenau; 2) Big sky over the Women’s Camp at B1A; 3) Near exit gate from Women’s Camp, B1A, where some of the first barracks were built at Birkenau beginning in March 1942.
