Monday, January 10, 2011

Dachau

This past week and a half have been an emotional whirlwind for me...which is why I have been neglecting my blog. Let's go back to my last day in Germany.......

After a full nights sleep in our Munich hostel, Skip, Val and I walked to the city center of Munich to meet up with a tour group that was heading to Dachau. The famous concentration camp is located about 40 minutes outside of the city via subway. It was one of the main camps during World War II, if not the most famous for the brutal and horrifying treatment of its prisoners.
Our tour guide was a short Irishman named Kevin, and he warned us that the tour we were about to take was not a pleasant one. I was prepared...or so I thought.
Arriving in the town of Dachau was like rolling in to any other European city. Nothing was different about it. We jumped on a bus that brought us to the gates of the tourist site. Still nothing out of the ordinary...
Walking up to the camp, we see that civilian homes surround it, meaning that there are people out there that have the remnants of a Nazi-run concentration camp in their backyards. Haunting.

We pass through the large gates and walk out to a vast and barren looking field, where the prisoners were forced to stand out in every day twice a day for roll call, no matter the weather conditions. Now on this particular day, the weather was minus 5, but with windchill had to be at least minus 10 below. Imagining how these prisoners had felt in this weather wearing barely scraps of cloth to cover their weak bodies was terrifying. We walked through the barracks where up to 2,000 men would have slept, through the "jail", where disgusting "medical trials" were performed on men who disobeyed the guards, and finally we were shown to the perfectly preserved gas chambers. This is a place that I will never forget. The feeling I had walking through this dark place is something that I hope to never experience again, but is something that everyone needs to experience in their lifetime. Not even the small dog that one tourist brought with him could stand to be in there. You could hear his whimpers echoing off of the cold stone walls throughout the chambers everywhere you went. Not pleasant. But worth it. The German people have worked hard to alter their reputations, but when you visit places such as this it is hard to see them and their German ancestors as anything but monsters.

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