A Dark Day

Finally got some real food last night- Mark and I went to the main train station (which is almost like a mini-airport) and got some Burger King and pizza. It was heaven!

Today was not so heavenly…just the opposite in fact. We went to visit the concentration camp located in Dachau, a small town nearby. This is a very significant camp because it was one of the first to open and served as a model for all the other camps. People (animals) who ran the other camps were trained here.

We paid for our audio guides and then walked down the gravel road that so many unlucky souls had marched down before us. We entered through the same gate that they had 60 years ago:

The words on the gate say “Work will set you free.” We walked into a big open area:

This area was used for roll call. Every morning and night, everyone had to assemble into this area for roll call. They had to stand at attention until everyone was accounted for. If someone was missing- usually dead- they had to continue standing until they found that person. Some people were so weak they would collapse and die. If someone tried to help another person, they were severely beaten. It was erie to walk on the same grounds where these horrible things had taken place in the not-so-distant past.


We got to tour one of the barracks. The original barracks had all been torn down, but they reconstructed two for the memorial site and one is open to walk through. The prisoners slept and used the bathroom in very close quarters:

It actually got worse. Towards the end of the war, this camp experienced severe overcrowding. These barracks were made for 200 men, but at times housed 2,000. There were 50 barracks in all, mostly used as bunks, but some had other functions.

One of the barracks was called the infirmary and it was one that the prisoners feared the most. They didn’t really take care of the sick. They conducted medical experiments on the prisoners. For example, the Nazis wanted to know if one of their pilots were shot down over water, how long they should look for the pilot before it is useless. So they would put monitoring devices on the prisoners and put them in ice cold water to see how long it would take for their organs to shut down and eventually die. They also injected prisoners with malaria to see how the body responded.

From here we passed on to the most emotional part of the memorial- the crematorium and the gas chamber. It makes me sick just to think about it. When they wanted to gas the prisoners, they told them it was time to take a shower and the prisoners would strip nude. They would all shove into this small room, where they would be locked in and gassed. And killed. The gas chamber at Dachau was not used for mass killings, but it was at multiple other concentration camps.

There are actually two crematoriums because the original one was not enough to fill their needs. They would just dump dozens or hundreds of corpses in there to burn, and would then bury the ashes. We got to see the memorials where the ashes were buried.

I cannot imagine how a human being can do this to another human being. We talk about spiritual warfare in our church group a lot, and about how God can let something this horrible happen if he had the power to stop it. I thought about that a lot today- if this memorial made me this sad, and it did…I was overcome with emotion at times…how much it must sadden Him. That is a whole other post….or a whole other blog….but all I will say is that I truly believe the powers of evil were at work here.

Finally, they had a museum to go through. They had a lot about the history of the war. I’ve never been a history buff and am a little ashamed to say I know very little about the WWs, but at a place like this it really comes alive. Certainly at Dachau, but also at Germany in general. Besides history, they had some art work, excerpts from letters and journals, and some old artifacts.

If anybody reading this gets the chance to tour a concentration camp, I would highly recommend it. Several people from our group did not go. It is sad- very sad- and it leaves you with a lot of questions and concerns. How can this go on for 12 years without somebody stopping it?? 12 years!! What can I do to stop similar (alas different) circumstance in places like Zimbabwe, Darfur, or Burma? It left me feeling a little helpless. But it also made me very grateful for my rights and the things that I usually take for granted. It’s important to embrace learning about this stuff. Differences need to be appreciated.

I feel like I am rambling now so I will stop. This evening Mark and I are going to English Garden, which is one of the largest parks in all of Europe. It’s bigger than Central Park. Apparently there is a lot to do there and nude sunbathers are the norm, but it is cloudy today so we will see. Thanks for reading...I am loving all your comments….show love to your best Jewish/Polish/Homosexual/Austrian/immigrant friend.