Have you ever thought about how big most numbers are?

Numbers are very abstract, so to speak, so if we use them in conversation without some other frame of reference we tend to undervalue the quantity which such a number would represent. Twenty? Fifty? Decent numbers but nothing amazing. They’re not a million, they’re merely fifty! But when you do run into these numbers in day to day life it hits you how big these numbers really are.

It’s one thing to think of the number 15 as a fairly small unit of counting, it’s another to go to the supermarket and have to look for what you want inside of 15 different isles. Suddenly the number 15 is quite large. It’s one thing to hear the number 8, and another to realize the elevator’s out and to have to climb 8 floors. Suddenly the number 8 means quite a lot.

Have you ever thought of how big the number 20 really is? or 50?

I have. On a school trip, of all places. I stand in front of 20 rows, and 50 columns, outstretched infront of me.

Of gravestones.

A few are decorated with various flourishes and touches. Most of them are blank. Past the stones are small metal plaques, held up by rods shoved in the dirt. The inscriptions list a person, the year of their birth, and the year of their death. A person, a whole life. We’re not sure if the inscriptions are on the same place the corpses are.

Our tour guide informs us that most of these tombs were put up in haste, the people of the ghetto did not have enough time to give everyone the respect they deserved before they were put under the earth. Eventually, they didn’t have enough time to give everyone separate graves, electing to throw every man, woman, and child in a large pile. I look at the packed dirt over the brothers’ tomb and try to imagine what it looks like underneath. A vague image forms in my mind, but I doubt it’s like reality.

Up until now we were somewhat ignorant of the purpose of our trip to Poland. Maybe not ignorant; that word implies we had no idea why we were there. We did, we just didn’t think about it, if we could avoid it. We went outside on particularly snowy days, making use of weather we could never get back home. We did a huge snow fight with everyone in the trip, including some unwilling teachers. I won’t forget how someone nailed the programming teacher in the back of the head, prompting her to join in on the fight. It was lovely. Some people are still making snowballs. I try not to look at them, I find it disrespectful.

The grid stretching infront of me is vast, vaster than I could really imagine, and yet we’re told it’s merely a thousand graves. Merely a thousand. We are beat over the head with large figures all day to the point where we forget how meaningful these numbers really are; the big 6 Million comes to mind. But I look forward and I see every single one of the thousand. It’s bigger than I thought.

I’m sure you tried imagining what I saw just now, willingly or not. I don’t think you imagined it accurately. I’m not judging, it’s just that we, as humans, aren’t built to handle these big numbers. Beyond a certain number, our imagination just pictures a large, homogenous concept, and tells us this is what “a thousand” is like. But you aren’t seeing every one of the thousand individudally. Every smooth, torso sized slab poking out of the earth. The graveyard stretched farther than I could have imagined. Just a thousand.

The memory of that sight is burned into my mind, of what these large numbers actually represent. Of what this abstract idea means when put into reality. I still don’t think I can picture such large numbers in my head, I don’t think I ever will. But that was the day that, for the first time, I knew how much I don’t know.