Dachau

I definitely needed a few days to process this particular experience. So here goes.

Let's start with the weather. Surprise surprise it's rainy and cold in Munich and surrounding areas. In this case, the dank chill seems fitting. En route to Dachau, I'm feeling nervous about how I will wind up percieving this particular experience. I send up a quick prayer and ask God to clear my mind of the frustration I'm feeling with the course in general and other peripheral issues that easily distract this ADHD mind of mine. Instead, I ask to be completely present in this place which served as the model for the multiple concentration and extermination camps used to further Hitler's twisted agenda. I vow to remember the ancestors of my dear friends who suffered in places modeled after Dachau - the template for all other concentration camps built during the war.

As we wait in the visitors center, I experience a feeling of incongruence. It doesn't feel right to be sitting in a cafeteria at the site that once represented a bleak and uncertain future for those who passed through it's gates. As we start our tour I ask our guide if the uneven cobblestone streets leading to the entrance are the originals. They are. I imagine what it must have been like for those who walked those same paths not realizing what awaited them on the other side of the gate.

Recounting everything I saw inside the camp would be pointless, since it's something that one can only understand via firsthand experience. Instead I'll just talk about some emotions I experienced and things I learned. As we sat in the room that used to be tr intake room, I looked out the windows facing the bleak landscape of building after building of barracks. It's errie, thinking about how many people were housed in those identical buildings. What were those in the intake room thinking as they looked outside at what their future held? As they were methodically stripped of their identities, what went through their minds? I am scared when I am stripped of my iPhone, nevermind my identity. It definitely puts things in perspective.

Moving to the rooms with the showers (actual showers, not the gas chambers in disguise), the original drains are still in place and exposed. I look down at it, imagine a prisoner getting their one shower per week and how they felt as they rinsed off a week of hard work. If the guards were in foul moods, the water would be unbearably hot or freezing cold, in which case no one actually got a real shower. The tour guide described the majority of SS officers as "simple men". How did people like that move up in the ranks to have the power to inflict major pain and suffering on a population targeted for their beliefs and/or lifestyles?

As we approached the gas chamber and creamatorium I felt ill. Even though Dachau was never used for mass killings, it was almost even more disconcerting that this was the model for places such as Auschwitz. It was the only time I really cried the entire tour. I just can't wrap my mind around the idea of building concentration camps like mcdonalds - all modeled after this very place.

The gas chambers are on the far side of the property. Just on the othe side of the fence you can see houses in the town of Dachau. Sometimes, village residents would give prisoners working in town pieces of bread, but for the most part they willingly chose to live in ignorance aboutl the horrific things going on in their backyard. What came over the the citizens? Were they paralyzed by fear? Or characterized by an apathy that is an innate part of human nature only brought out by the most extenuating of conditions? Either one is disturbing and a phenomena one can never fully understand unless through direct experience.

The trip home left my mind surprisingly quiet. We had a debrief, but since our professor wasn't there at Dachau with us it was yet another exercise in frustration. Without sharing an experience like that one it's hard to want to talk about it. I was really was grateful for my friends that night. We talked about it amongst ourselves. Perhaps the best part of this trip is the friends I've made and the conversations we've had. There's people from all over the country on this trip, and I've forgotten how different individuals from different areas approach various social work related issues as well as life in general.


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