"work sets you free"

The sky is clear blue with enough thick gray clouds to make everything seem dark. It is unusually cool, a brisk breeze cutting across the open land. The ground, littered with rocks all shades of gray, crunches uncomfortably under my feet. People are all around, but thick silence makes it hard to breathe. Green trees try to bring forgetfulness, yet the longer I walk, the more difficult it is to ignore my grief. Empty rooms, once filled with prisoners under SS control, are cold reminders of the horrors of the Nazi concentration ‘work’ camps.

I knew that this would be a powerful experience, having read several accounts of the Holocaust in school and watching plays and movies. Nothing compares to actually walking the grounds where the prisoners walked every day. Dachau was the model for all future concentration camps, and was used for the holding of political opponents. These people stood against the Nazi party and were shipped here, instead of most of the Jewish residents who were sent to be literally ‘exterrminated’. Dachau’s prisoners were not sent to die, they were sent to suffer. Extreme rules were enforced, such as a spotless bed and ceramic drinking cup in order to avoid being hung at the stake for an hour. People died more from exhaustion here than from mass extermination. Only two barracks that housed prisoners remain, however, they stretched for almost a mile down and a half mile wide across the camp. All that is left is a cement footing where the structure was set upon.

There is a large building in the very back corner of the walls of Dachau that seems harmless, almost like a small school. There are several windows and glass doors leading inside. Once inside however, one would never see sunlight. Although no other camp matches the efficiency attained by Auschwitz (which could easily exterminate several thousand a day), it is estimated 30,000 people died by gas chamber at Dachau. I walked through each room in the creamatorium, starting with the holding rooms where prisoners would wait until it was their group’s turn to enter the ‘showers’. Inside, a 6.5 foot ceiling contained multiple shower heads, disguising the room’s true use, several vents of gas that would be released. It took 20 minutes for the gas to work, and the room would be vented before the bodies could be hauled into the next room. 4 furnaces still stand with large iron stretchers where bodies would be burned one at a time. If there was overflow, bodies would be stored in the next room over until the SS could catch up. The ashes were dumped outside in 3 shallow pits, where memorials currently stand. Walking past the ash graves, one sees a large cement wall with barbed wire and vines growing over most of it. A sign says “firing range” where some prisoners were lined up and shot by firing squad. No wonder no one was able to speak. It took all of my strength to force myself to keep looking, to keep experiencing and to ultimately break down from sadness.

I walked through a room where people innocently thought they were going to have the luxury of a clean shower. I stood where they stood, saw the last light they saw and past where their bodies were stored and burned. I saw where their ashes were piled, where prisoners were executed and how their blood ran down a ditch into the woods. All I could do was pray, then cry. So many lies and so much anger.

The pain of the Holocaust lives. That’s why the German government doesn’t charge admission to the camp memorial sites. It is why German military are required to walk through the camp before they are enlisted, so they understand the fair trial and treatment of prisoners. It is why every world leader, every person in power, every human who has ever hated so much based on religion or sexual orientation or color should see where hate has gotten us. The pain of the Holocaust lives, and I don’t think that pain should ever be fully healed. We should experience the pain so we can say “never again”.