Dachau Concentration Camp
Trip Start
Aug 01, 2005
1
7
19
Trip End
Oct 04, 2005
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Dachau, Germany
Sunday, August 21, 2005
We felt a presence upon entering the Dachau concentration camp. It was a dark presence that whispered to our souls of the horrors and atrocities that had occurred there. We began by walking through an iron gate that had the words "Work will set you free". Barbed wire lined walls met ominous guard towers and surrounded a complex that saw over 206,000 Jews, Gypsies, political/religious prisoners, homosexuals, and mentally ill people housed in this so-called "work camp." It's one thing to visit the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., the Yad Veshem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, to feel outrage when watching documentaries and movies, but it's something entirely different to stand in the crematorium where thousands of bodies were burned, to walk through barracks where 400 people were crowded into rooms that are supposed to hold 40, or to stand in a place and see a nearby picture from 60 years before showing a pile of shriveled corpses in the spot where you are standing. The crematorium still had the scent of burned flesh, the wooden beams were worn where the ropes hung for hangings, and the pillars were still standing where prisoners were tethered and tortured for hours on end. By the end of the trip, we left in silence, feeling beaten, angry, and saddened. We were marked by this place.
Comments
Grandpa was there
My dad walked from France into Germany in 1945. He did not discover a camp, but arrived a few days later. He won't talk about it.
Your description about your feeling and emotions to the visit was sensitive and well written.
Dad