It's hard to imagine good news coming from Auschwitz, the infamous site of the deaths of more than 1.1 million men, women and children during the Holocaust. But in the middle of last month, some heartening news materialized from the ashes that lie on the camp's grounds. On Feb. 18, The New York Times reported that those responsible for preserving Auschwitz, a crucial piece of evidence in the history of global genocide, are redesigning the exhibition at the camp.In the aftermath of World War II, Auschwitz was transformed into a museum with exhibitions and memorial sites that attract 600,000 tourists each year, according to the German newspaper Der Spiegel. For nearly 60 years, those tourists have experienced Auschwitz in a raw form, as the landscape, barracks, gateway and other structures have remained mostly untouched in order to showcase the utter pain and evil the Nazis created for their victims.

In a sense, this method works. I had the opportunity to visit the camp when I spent a week in Poland on a trip called March of the Living several years ago, and walking into the camp beneath the notorious, glaring sign, which reads Arbeit Macht Frei-"work makes one free"-did have a significant effect. The sign, a public symbol in contemporary discourse on Auschwitz, is heavy on the eyes. I recall experiencing a sinking sensation, a deepening fear of seeing the evidence with my own eyes. Did I really want to keep walking into Auschwitz?

But my experience in Auschwitz cannot speak for all-nor should it. Everyone should take time and think seriously about how to connect with this episode of mass murder on a personal level. Sixty years later, however, time and distance from the tragic events have obscured the alarmingly personal effect that even just the idea of Auschwitz and Birkenau has on people. While some people like myself have natural connections to the Holocaust, most people today-especially our generation-are too far removed from the trauma to properly commemorate it.

Piotr Cywiski, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, said that the revamped exhibition at Auschwitz would explain step-by-step to visitors the process of extermination, describing in detail what concentration camp victims experienced. The exhibit would add a very human element to one's visit to Auschwitz. Cywiski said, "Our role is to show the human acts and decisions that took place in extreme situations here ... So, we may pose the question, should a mother give a child to the grandmother and go to selection alone, or take the child with her? This was a real choice, without a good solution, but at Auschwitz, you had to make the choice."

This won't have the same jarring effect that seeing the inside of a barrack which my grandmother slept had on me; I would never expect the average visitor to experience the same mental tumult. But the prospect of making these frightening choices takes the entire visit to Auschwitz to a new level. It's not merely a museum exhibition, complete with the original wooden barracks and gas chamber parts. Haunting as those may be, Auschwitz will now invite everyone to deliberate over the same intense moral decisions that prisoners faced.

And this seems to me like a prime destination for students like us. Brandeis students are known to be globally conscious. Undoubtedly, we all have various places in mind we'd like to visit, different things we'd like to learn and a wide range of cultures we'd like to encounter-all, of course, while we're still young and curious and ready make a difference. For sophomores, the study abroad deadline has just passed; many juniors and seniors have already studied abroad or have otherwise gotten a taste of traveling. I would encourage everyone to add Auschwitz to your list, regardless of where you are in your studies and regardless of your career path and life plans. You won't take the same kinds of happy photos as you would near the Eiffel Tower or the Vatican. But Auschwitz has an aesthetic value all its own.

Auschwitz is a place that makes you think. Fear your journey there, but plan it anyway. Moving forward into the future, it is vital that students approach World War II history with the same interest as they traditionally give the rest of Western Europe. The museum's directors understand this; they want you to come. They want to give you an experience. Let them, for there are few places on our planet where you can experience this type of catharsis.