Hello friends,
I went to visit Dachau Concentration Camp two weeks ago during a
visit to Munich, my first ever visit to a concentration camp, and I wanted to share my impressions here:
All I could see was red.
All I could see was red.
Red on the gravel crunching under my ballet flats. Red
on the tall trees towering above the open fields. Red smeared across the
doorways of religious monuments at one end of the compound. Red everywhere.
Not literally, of course, but the taint of the horrors that happened at Dachau and other camps like it chilled my blood. I happened to visit on a hot, cloudless day. Objectively speaking, the entire place could look lovely--big, open area, two rows of tall, full trees towering over the middle main road of the compound. But it was the little things that really got to me. The entry gates that read "Work will make you free," one of the lies that Nazis thought up to convince people to work harder, or the nondescript sign down a small forest path that read, "Execution Range with Blood Ditch." Birds chirped around me, I stood alone, and saw this stone, almost unnoticed, on a forest path.
To give a brief description of the layout of the camp (Dachau apparently was the model used to design most of the other camps), we walked in through the gates down at the bottom right of the image below and stood in a big open area (3). This was where the prisoners would be lined up and counted, etc. On this end now stands a museum building (5), a monument in several languages, and a black metal memorial sculpture made to look like barbed wire but if you look closely includes images of humans in agony. As you turn to face down the main central road of the camp, flanked on both sides by trees (1), extending out on either side are where the barracks once stood (2). Now, only two have been recreated, but the outlining foundations of the others extend back a long way.
Not literally, of course, but the taint of the horrors that happened at Dachau and other camps like it chilled my blood. I happened to visit on a hot, cloudless day. Objectively speaking, the entire place could look lovely--big, open area, two rows of tall, full trees towering over the middle main road of the compound. But it was the little things that really got to me. The entry gates that read "Work will make you free," one of the lies that Nazis thought up to convince people to work harder, or the nondescript sign down a small forest path that read, "Execution Range with Blood Ditch." Birds chirped around me, I stood alone, and saw this stone, almost unnoticed, on a forest path.
On the ground at Dachau Concentration Camp, outside of Munich, Germany
Layout of Dachau, from http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauCampMap.html
At the opposite end (6, 7, 9) are the locations of several memorial locations, like a Jewish building, and Christian buildings from various denominations. All in all, they are pretty stark, to be honest. The horror for me lay in looking out across the enormity of the place and its emptiness. The camp was meant to hold 6,000 (mostly political) prisoners, but when it was liberated in 1945, it had 30,000.
Number 11 is where "Barracks X" aka a gas chamber and crematorium stand. I stood in a gas chamber. I stood in a gas chamber. Red, everything, everything was red in the feeling, in the darkness, in the chill horrors of what the camp was built for. Whether or not the gas chamber was ever used is up for discussion, but the hatred palpable in the design of the building where they stood was horrible. There was a room for prisoners to wait in. Then one for them to strip of all their clothes, and where they were told they were going to take "showers." This led into the gas chamber, complete with fake shower heads to keep prisoners calm. Then the next room was for storing dead bodies. Then the ovens. One room after another, systematic, treating the people like they were not even human, just numbers to be processed through the huge chain of murder.
How could people have done this to one another? This is not only about antisemitism, or religion in general, or color or politics. It's about all of that. It's about how a group of people, yes, led by one madman, but how an entire group of people undertook an operation to try to rid Europe and ultimately the world of "undesirable" types. Yes, this included Jews, and yes, that means the Holocaust (or "Shoah," as Jewish circles often refer to it) holds particular weight for me. Why would someone ever want to kill me, simply because I pray in Hebrew? Or if someone were to abstain from eating pork or doing something on Saturdays? It's hard to comprehend. But the murders extended beyond Jews, too, to the disabled, to Catholics, to the political opposition, to Gypsies, and others.
Which makes interfaith efforts today all the more essential. As I have written before, the old adage of not talking about religion just doesn't hold for me. I have had many tough conversations, sometimes even with friends, when we disagree vehemently on critical issues. Sometimes I honestly wonder if my very religious Christian friends think I am doomed to some bad fate because of my religion. But we talk about the issues. We come to the table acknowledging that we respect one another and our mutual faith choices, and then we talk about it. I'm not advocating walking up to strangers and saying, "Hi, I'm Jewish/Christian/Muslim/etc. Let's chat!" (*ahem* Not that I've ever done that before *ahem*) but if you see an opportunity where maybe you don't understand something someone says about their religion, or maybe someone doesn't seem to understand your views, open the door. I often find asking questions is the best way to explore these topics, by simply saying to someone, "As a religious individual, what is your view on this topic?" with no expectations usually of even discussing my views unless they ask. It can be hard to listen, but also essential.
So remember the horrors of the Holocaust as you go about your day today, tomorrow, this week. Jewish people really focus on the idea of "never forget" with regard to the Holocaust, but I fear that we do. We forget that 12,000,000 died just a few decades ago. Twelve million. We go about our days, myself included, and herald the strides that are being made, that the new Pope came out and supported people of all faiths and even those with no faith, that Muslims in Britain vehemently responded in opposition to the crazy man who killed a solider there just a few weeks ago supposedly because of his mistaken sense of Muslim duty. But the Holocaust was not so long ago, and even today people are persecuted for their beliefs in places around the world.
The number 12,000,000 did not mean as much as it did when I stood in Dachau and realized just how large a camp for 6,000 people was, and it put some things in perspective. I visited the camp as part of a three-week backpacking trip through Europe this month, and many times I visited Jewish sites in the places we went. The museum in Amsterdam. A memorial in Berlin. The Jewish section in Prague. Places devoid of the strong Jewish presence that existed there before the Shoah. Maybe the Nazis did not kill all European Jews, but those Jews that remain are mere shadows of the vibrant communities that once existed there. Perhaps I'm cynical because of all of my research into contemporary antisemitism in Europe, and I am sure that many Jewish individuals happily live in various European nations today, but many times all I can see--in Dachau, in Berlin, everywhere in Europe--is red. Here's to hoping that with the right efforts from people of all faiths, some day that red will no longer symbolize death, but love.
Now go out and love one another.
<3,
Allyson
View from a window in the recreated barracks
Number 11 is where "Barracks X" aka a gas chamber and crematorium stand. I stood in a gas chamber. I stood in a gas chamber. Red, everything, everything was red in the feeling, in the darkness, in the chill horrors of what the camp was built for. Whether or not the gas chamber was ever used is up for discussion, but the hatred palpable in the design of the building where they stood was horrible. There was a room for prisoners to wait in. Then one for them to strip of all their clothes, and where they were told they were going to take "showers." This led into the gas chamber, complete with fake shower heads to keep prisoners calm. Then the next room was for storing dead bodies. Then the ovens. One room after another, systematic, treating the people like they were not even human, just numbers to be processed through the huge chain of murder.
A pile of dead bodies outside the Dachau crematorium
How could people have done this to one another? This is not only about antisemitism, or religion in general, or color or politics. It's about all of that. It's about how a group of people, yes, led by one madman, but how an entire group of people undertook an operation to try to rid Europe and ultimately the world of "undesirable" types. Yes, this included Jews, and yes, that means the Holocaust (or "Shoah," as Jewish circles often refer to it) holds particular weight for me. Why would someone ever want to kill me, simply because I pray in Hebrew? Or if someone were to abstain from eating pork or doing something on Saturdays? It's hard to comprehend. But the murders extended beyond Jews, too, to the disabled, to Catholics, to the political opposition, to Gypsies, and others.
Which makes interfaith efforts today all the more essential. As I have written before, the old adage of not talking about religion just doesn't hold for me. I have had many tough conversations, sometimes even with friends, when we disagree vehemently on critical issues. Sometimes I honestly wonder if my very religious Christian friends think I am doomed to some bad fate because of my religion. But we talk about the issues. We come to the table acknowledging that we respect one another and our mutual faith choices, and then we talk about it. I'm not advocating walking up to strangers and saying, "Hi, I'm Jewish/Christian/Muslim/etc. Let's chat!" (*ahem* Not that I've ever done that before *ahem*) but if you see an opportunity where maybe you don't understand something someone says about their religion, or maybe someone doesn't seem to understand your views, open the door. I often find asking questions is the best way to explore these topics, by simply saying to someone, "As a religious individual, what is your view on this topic?" with no expectations usually of even discussing my views unless they ask. It can be hard to listen, but also essential.
So remember the horrors of the Holocaust as you go about your day today, tomorrow, this week. Jewish people really focus on the idea of "never forget" with regard to the Holocaust, but I fear that we do. We forget that 12,000,000 died just a few decades ago. Twelve million. We go about our days, myself included, and herald the strides that are being made, that the new Pope came out and supported people of all faiths and even those with no faith, that Muslims in Britain vehemently responded in opposition to the crazy man who killed a solider there just a few weeks ago supposedly because of his mistaken sense of Muslim duty. But the Holocaust was not so long ago, and even today people are persecuted for their beliefs in places around the world.
The number 12,000,000 did not mean as much as it did when I stood in Dachau and realized just how large a camp for 6,000 people was, and it put some things in perspective. I visited the camp as part of a three-week backpacking trip through Europe this month, and many times I visited Jewish sites in the places we went. The museum in Amsterdam. A memorial in Berlin. The Jewish section in Prague. Places devoid of the strong Jewish presence that existed there before the Shoah. Maybe the Nazis did not kill all European Jews, but those Jews that remain are mere shadows of the vibrant communities that once existed there. Perhaps I'm cynical because of all of my research into contemporary antisemitism in Europe, and I am sure that many Jewish individuals happily live in various European nations today, but many times all I can see--in Dachau, in Berlin, everywhere in Europe--is red. Here's to hoping that with the right efforts from people of all faiths, some day that red will no longer symbolize death, but love.
Now go out and love one another.
<3,
Allyson
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