A Beautiful Place for Hell

A Mountain Wrapped in Silence: Confronting the Lessons of Struthof

“Ceux qui admireront la beauté naturelle de ce sommet ne pourront croire que cette montagne est maudite parce qu’elle a abrité l’enfer des hommes libres.” — Léon Boutbien, résistant, déporté à Natzweiler Struthof

The Vosges mountains are achingly beautiful. You look out and see nothing but sweeping hills, endless trees, and golden brush. It feels peaceful. Timeless. But that’s the first cruelty of Struthof—how beauty was used to mask barbarity.

High in this quiet mountain range, the Nazis built a place meant to disappear people. The Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp wasn’t just about forced labor or death. It was about erasure. Of names. Of identities. Of dignity.

And it wasn’t just Jews. Struthof housed resistance fighters labeled NN—Nacht und Nebel, or Night and Fog—people condemned from the beginning, whose names weren’t even meant to survive. Homosexuals were branded with pink triangles. Jehovah’s Witnesses with purple. “Asocials” and Roma with black. Political prisoners with red. Criminals with green. Jews with yellow. Some uniforms bore two triangles combined, forming a Star of David. Others had literal targets sewn to their backs so guards knew who to torment more brutally.

These weren’t just markers. They were tools of dehumanization. Symbols that said: you are no longer a person. You are something to be controlled, worked, and ultimately destroyed.

Roll calls lasted hours—no matter the weather. Snow, hail, blistering sun. If a prisoner collapsed, they were beaten. Or worse. The gallows stood in plain view of the square, and public executions were carried out during these roll calls. It wasn’t just punishment—it was terror, designed to remind every person there that their life could be taken at any moment, without reason or mercy.

Forced labor was unending, and rarely for anything outside of building their own prisons. Tasks were meant to humiliate and exhaust. Every part of the system was designed to grind down the human spirit.

Escape wasn’t an option. If someone tried and failed—or took their own life—the rest of the block paid for it. No one was safe. Despair was collective. Survival, uncertain.

The medical “experiments” haunt me. Sterilizations. Injections. Incisions. Death by infection, by torture, by cold calculation. This wasn’t medicine. It was mutilation under the mask of science. The most horrifying part? How calmly it was carried out.

Even the showers were a lie. A gas chamber disguised as hygiene. Prisoners were told to undress, to wash. Instead, they were locked inside and suffocated—death delivered under the pretense of cleanliness. The cruelty wasn’t only in the killing, but in the deception. The gas wasn’t just a method of execution—it was an experiment. They wanted to observe how the human body reacted to it. Death was inevitable, but the suffering beforehand was part of the spectacle. These monsters didn’t just witness the pain—they reveled in it.

Then there’s the crematorium. I stood there longer than I expected. Imagining bodies on the slat, slid into the chamber and rotated—like meat—so they’d burn evenly. This wasn’t metaphor. This was reality. A place where efficiency met inhumanity. And if the victim happened to be German—because not all Germans were Nazis, and many resisted or were imprisoned for being gay or politically defiant—their ashes were sometimes placed in jars and sold to their families, as if that final cruelty could be packaged and priced.

Even now, flowers bloom outside that building. Birds sing. The sky is the deepest blue. And I stood there thinking: How does the earth keep turning after something like this?

Outside the museum is a sculpture of a skeletal body—skin sagging, arms thin as reeds. At first, I thought it abstract. Then I realized: no. That was someone’s body. That is what starvation looks like when it’s policy.

That image never left me. Not when I sat in the car after. Not when I lay in bed later that night. And not now, when I see photos coming out of Gaza—of children with the same hollowed-out limbs, the same vacant stare. It’s the same dangerous idea: that some lives are worth less. That some people don’t deserve a trial, dignity, food, or air.

It’s the same idea that allows the U.S. to quietly send immigrants to overcrowded prisons in El Salvador, with no trial, no due process—just paperwork that washes the blood from our hands. It’s the same idea that lets people joke about harming trans people. That criminalizes entire communities for existing.

It starts with fear. Then labels. Then silence.

The solitary cells at Struthof are barely large enough for a dog crate. Yet people were stuffed inside them for days. Weeks. Left to sit in their own waste. To go mad. To break.

And above it all stands a sculpture in the courtyard—an enormous figure hanging mid-air, limp, lifeless. It rises high like a scream caught in stone. A reminder of what happens when cruelty becomes normal. When it’s no longer shocking. When the world looks away.

I felt sick. But more than that—I felt responsible. Because the warning signs aren’t in the past. They’re here.

Propaganda still tells people who to hate. Neighbors still turn against each other. Dignity is still denied, not just in war zones, but in policy, in headlines, in comments left on the internet.

I came here to learn. But I left changed. Struthof doesn’t whisper. It demands. It says: Look again. Look closer. Do you see it now?

This mountain remembers. And I will too.

Not Just Politics: The Quiet Grief of an American Abroad

A Seat at the Table: Bearing Witness at the European Parliament

I wasn’t expecting to feel so much.

It was supposed to be a simple afternoon—an exciting one, no doubt, but still, just a glimpse into the workings of the European Parliament. As someone with a background in political science and a life steeped in travel, being granted access to a live debate session felt like the kind of moment you note quietly in your memory, file under “professional wins,” and carry on.

But then I sat down and listened.

The session was focused on retaliatory tariffs against the United States. More specifically, in response to decisions made by a political figure I won’t name here—because, much like Voldemort, his name feels like a platform, and I’d rather not give him one.

And suddenly, it was no longer just an academic moment. It was personal. My heart rate quickened. My hands trembled slightly. I realized, in real time, that I was watching some of the world’s most influential voices debate the global fallout of my home country’s actions. It wasn’t hypothetical. It wasn’t distant. It was here, now, and deeply real.

The Weight of the Mirror 

It’s a strange thing to feel so disconnected from a place, and yet so affected by how it’s perceived. I’ve spent the past few years intentionally putting space between myself and the United States—not just physically, but emotionally, philosophically. I’ve done the inner work, questioned my allegiance, unpacked my privilege. I’ve learned to speak about the U.S. from a place of nuance, not nationalism.

But watching that debate, I wasn’t prepared for how it would feel to hear my country laid bare in such stark terms. I agreed with the criticisms—I’ve voiced them myself countless times. But hearing them echoed in this grand chamber by people with the power to act on them… it was like watching your house catch fire, from outside the window, knowing your family is still inside.

The proposed measures made sense. Still, I wondered how they would ripple. How would they touch the people I love? How would they impact me, even if I’m only briefly returning? There was no clean answer. Only the heaviness of being caught between identities—branded by the place you came from, even when your heart has found home elsewhere.

A Global Reckoning

There was an eerie familiarity to it all. As the speakers raised their voices—not in anger, but in solemn urgency—I couldn’t help but feel like I was watching history repeat itself. A debate before the storm. An attempt to reason with rising authoritarianism. It felt like the kind of moment we read about decades later, wondering how people missed the signs. Only this time, I was in the room.

And I kept thinking about the duality that defines my life now. I live in a space between worlds: American by passport, global by practice. I’m always translating—language, culture, intention, implication. And in moments like this, the weight of that responsibility feels especially heavy.

What Will My Travelers Feel? 

Soon, I’ll be guiding students and travelers through these same halls. They’ll sit in these seats. They’ll look down at the same chamber floor where I watched the debate unfold. And I wonder—will they feel it?

Will they understand the privilege of being here, in this moment in time? Will they grasp the power of seeing themselves reflected in the eyes of the world—not through headlines or echo chambers, but through dialogue, diplomacy, and consequence?

I don’t want them to come here just to check a box. I want them to listen. To question. To let their perspectives stretch, even uncomfortably. Maybe they’ll leave changed. Maybe they’ll begin to understand what it means to be both of a place and beyond it.

Carrying the Echo

This experience has stayed with me in a way I didn’t expect. It reminded me why I left. But it also reminded me of what I carry. I’m not running from something—I’m running toward something. Toward understanding, connection, responsibility. Toward the hope that we can still shape the future by showing up fully, even when the path feels uncertain.

I left the parliament building that day without any answers. But with a renewed sense of why I do this work. Why I write. Why I guide. Why I believe in the power of bearing witness—even when it’s uncomfortable, especially then.

Because the truth is, silence writes its own story. And I’d rather speak—even if my voice shakes.