April 25-26, 1998

Dachau Concentration Camp

From Die Weiss, we went to Garmisch, just outside the Austrian border! Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to go to Austria-next time we will! Our hotel was very nice. The bathroom was cramped but at least we had our own and didn't have to share! We ate dinner and went to sleep. We woke up the next morning at 7:30, ate breakfast and began our trek home. We had one more stop before we made it back, though. That was a trip to Dachau. Dachau used to be one of the "extermination camps" of WWII-it was the first. It didn't start out to be that way. They converted an old ammunitions factory into a political prison and from there, you know the rest of the story pretty much. Dachau was also one of the main places they conducted inhumane and unethical medical experiments on the prisoners.

The place looked very similar to a military boot camp facility. It had one main building (where the guards did the administrative work). It had about 6 guard towers along the perimeter. It had a big open area where "roll call" was done every day. From there, you could look down a path lined with poplar trees the prisoners planted. The path went past the barracks where all the "residents" lived (if you could call it that). All the original barracks have been torn down due to dereliction. Only two have been reconstructed for historical purposes. The foundations of all the others have remained and a concrete block with the barracks numbers remain of the others. There were about 30 buildings. Ideally, 208 people should have shared one building (and even that number is crowded); but in reality, nearly 1600 people shared a building. From 1933-1945, they registered 206,206 people with Dachau. The numbers were grossly misrepresented. We walked throughout the compound and even visited the crematorium. It was unnerving to realize that people were murdered here and to actually see the original "ovens". In one of those ovens someone laid a rose in it in remembrance of those who died there. We also walked through the fumigation chamber and a gas chamber they claim was never used. Those that were gassed were transported to Hartheim Castle. In total, according to the files of the International Tracing Service, 31,591 "registered" prisoners died in the Dachau concentration camp.

Since the liberation of the Dachau prisoners, different organizations constructed numerous memorials to those who died here. The Catholic "Todesangst Christi Kapelle" (1960), The Jewish Memorial Temple (1965), The Protestant Memorial Church (1965), International Memorial (1968), Carmelite covent (1964), and the Russian Orthodox chapel (1995). Aside from these memorials, you can also see the plaques on the walls, flowers left in remembrance, the statue, and the rot iron art depicting entangled bodies.

I didn't much like that part of the trip. It made me think of how horrible people really can be. I just cannot comprehend how those people who did all that could go to bed with themselves. I also thought about the people who claim it never happened. How could they believe that?! And to think that we would never have come so far in the medical industry if it hadn't have been for what they did during WWII. It's a horrific blessing (I couldn't categorize it any other way). We decided after about an hour and a half of walking through the compound, we were finished. We really didn't have the heart to see the film they showed. We had already seen plenty of documentaries on the subject (and the movie "Schindler's List"). And we had already imagined the horrors held in the encampment. The film would have been too much.

I am glad that experience is over. I did want to go, just to let my own mind know about this tragic event in our history. But it was still unsettling. I am glad the German government did not destroy all evidence of such a tragedy. It lets the people know what happened and that we are capable of doing this again. A good reason for visiting stood at the last memorial we saw leaving the camp-a tomb of the ashes of an unknown prisoner, and on the wall above it read-"Never Again".