Our holiday in Poland was filled with laughter and companionship. Yet, interspersed were moments that were far more sombre.

We walked through the Jewish quarters and the remnants of the ghettos in Warsaw. These were not just places on an itinerary; they were spaces that demanded silence, reflection. At the start of a walking tour in Warsaw, our guide made a statement. The events, she said, could not possibly be condensed into two and a half hours. It was easy to reduce history to simple binaries-to label all Germans as perpetrators, or to question why Polish citizens did not stand up for their Jewish neighbours.

Then she asked us to pause and imagine a world where offering shelter to a persecuted individual could invite death-not only for oneself, but for one’s entire family. Imagine the weight of that choice, and in that moment history moved away from........

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