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A solemn tour of Auschwitz includes a memorial song
Tuesday, May 20, 2008, the Glee Club toured the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, situated near Oswiecim, Poland. Many men of the Glee Club were visibly moved as Marta, one of the group's tour guides, described the atrocities inflicted at the place that has become the symbol of the Holocaust.
The museum tour included rooms filled with personal items belonging to victims, including luggage, shoes, eyeglasses and children's clothing. One room contained human hair, many still in braids, that was shorn from the victims, and used by the Nazis to weave cloth. Even the most stoic Glee Club men were shaken by what they saw.

Members of the Glee Club had debated for months whether or not it would be appropriate to sing in a place that had seen such cruelty and human misery. Maciej, the Glee Club's Polish tour guide, assured the men that it was indeed appropriate to sing at the camp, at one place between Cell Blocks 10 and 11 known as "The Death Wall", where thousands of executions had been carried out.

It was at this place that the Glee Club sang the Hebrew song "Ba Sha Na", as a memorial to the victims of the death camp. "I could barely get out the words", one Glee Club member later said. The English translation of "Ba Sha Na" is, "Next year, when peace will come we shall return to the simple pleasures of life so long denied us. You will see, you will see. O how good it will be, next year!"

It was an experience that none of the men will ever forget.

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