I’m not Jewish.

I’m a young person who thinks it’s important to remember that genocide is wrong.

In Amsterdam, I found a copy of her diary in the train station when I felt anxious and alone and I needed something to read, a physical, tangible book that I could hold in my hands and open and flip through the pages and smell the paper and scribble things in the margins. I needed another world to escape into, and that world was hers.

In Hamburg, I stood at the top of the tower that is most of what remains of the Church of St Nicolai. The rest of it was destroyed by the Allies’ bombs in World War II, as was much of the rest of that city. At the top of that tower, there is a plaque explaining that Germans must remember that those bombings were a justified retaliation to things that Nazi Germany had done first. Things that were unquestionably wrong.

In Potsdam, I saw buildings that were not destroyed in the war. And some of them were older than any man-made thing I’d ever seen, and they were full of stories and personality and life, and they were beautiful.

In Berlin, I walked with children playing in between the rows upon rows of dark monoliths that make up the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The stone floor beneath our feet rolled up and down like waves, and the stones became higher and higher the farther we got from the edge – beginning at waist height, and gradually rising – like water, rising – so slowly we didn’t notice what was happening until it closed above our heads. And yet, the columns and rows of stone were perfectly straight, and so was the space between them, so that no matter how deep inside the maze we found ourselves – ducking in and out from behind the stones, giggling and grinning and crying a little inside – we could always see the way out.

In Prague, I visited the Jewish Museum. I saw a room with walls covered in the names of the dead, written in letters the size of fingerprints. I saw an exhibit of children’s drawings, something that became an important part of their education system in the ghettos – after they were forbidden to attend public schools, and before they were shipped off to concentration camps.

I stood inside of the Old New Synagog, and sat on a wooden bench and leaned my head against a wall that was built before anyone on this side of the ocean knew that America existed. I learned about the intricate nature of Jewish burial rituals, the way that they care for the dying and honor the dead. I walked through the Old Jewish cemetery on All Saint’s day. There was some logistical problem that meant they didn’t have enough space for everyone, so they just started stacking them, twelve layers deep in some places, the crooked tombstones crowded together like teeth, like a dense forest. It looks like it grew.

And I lit a candle and sat for a while, because I’m just kind of like that.

In Krakow, Poland, I went to Kazimierz, the Jewish quarter of the city. There are signs in the buildings in Hebrew, and six-pointed stars. I stepped inside the oldest Synagog in Poland, which has become a museum, and learned about Jewish culture and tradition. About their holidays, and festivals, and memories, and rituals. They are intricate and strict and sweet, and practical and solemn. Speaking as an outsider, it seems like these people value things like light and rest and community, and I can totally get behind all of those things. It’s not my identity, but I can stand here and I can learn about and start to honor yours.

Today in Krakow, I visited a memorial in what used to be a ghetto. There is an organization there that works to return the physical things that were stolen from holocaust victims by the Nazi party to their families. “We are looking for relatives of…” followed by a name, a number, who they were, everything we know about what happened to them. Too often, their fates are unknown.

Tomorrow, I am going to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps.

I did not set out on this journey with any intention of doing this. At home, the holocaust was something distant, horrifying, over, far away. But here, on this side of the ocean, everywhere I’ve been there is a reminder, a memorial, a sacred space. Europe is singing a requiem, and I was close enough to hear it.

I’m not sure what’ll happen to me. I am frightened. I’ve seen the pictures – we all did, in like tenth grade, and I left that classroom shaking even back then. Now it is something that’s real. And for a second there I thought I wasn’t going to be able to do this. I’m sure as hell going to be exhausted afterwards.

But I have to go. Because she did, once. And I want to say goodbye.