Today I drove to Dachau. Dachau is outside of Munich and was the first Nazi concentration camp. There are lots of pictures and the audio guide has lots of personal accounts from those held prisoner here and from liberators. It was a very heavy, depressing, moving experience. I felt sick to my stomach and thought I might get sick a couple of times. The cells were very cold, I can't imagine how it must have been in the dead of winter. It is very eerie walking the grounds, going into the gas chamber, crematorium and barracks. To enter one goes through the actual gate the prisoners walked through. It is the one that says "Work will set you free." Very moving to stand where they stood for roll call. There were several buses of German high school students there. German schoolchildren are required to visit a concentration camp. It felt very odd. A couple of generations ago people greeted each other with a "Sieg Heil!" Today, almost no Germans know the lyrics of their national anthem, and German flags are a rarity outside of major soccer matches.
I was glad that I went and glad to leave. I practically ran to the parking lot, I was so anxious to get out of there. I felt awful and took wipes and scrubbed myself down in the car. I wasn't physically dirty but psychologically I felt I needed a hot shower.
It was odd visiting Dachau a day after the torture museum. The stuff in the torture museum was awful but one could think "Those people in the middle ages were sure whacky, what were they thinking?!" But Dachau, well on the big timeline it is now.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment