A former concentration camp used to murder hundreds of thousands of people between the years of 1933-1945. The things I saw and felt on the grounds of the former death camp were sickening, maddening, disgusting, tear jerking, heartbreaking, frustrating, REAL, dismal, horrific, painful. Dauchau brought more life and reality to a historical event than I thought possible – I felt somehow personally involved? responsible? It was a sort of day of mourning for me, and I will not soon forget the things I learned and saw that day.
Dachau was the only camp that was in operation during the full duration of the Nazi regime. Starting in 1933, political “prisoners” were sent to the former rifle factory. What started as a small production site grew from its two original barracks to thirty-four barracks. Fully equip with a “hospital” in which thousands of medical experiments took place, often costing prisoners their lives. 32,000 people were found in the camp on the day of liberation… I walked on the same grounds where those prisoners – and tens of thousands of others – would stand at attention for roll call each morning, would work themselves to death doing meaningless labor, would whisper words of encouragement or news of family in passing, would intentionally disobey an SS officer to commit suicide as a final assertion of their ability to CHOOSE something.
I saw the original train station in Dauchau. I took the rout which survivors of the train ride would have been paraded through town on the way to the camp. I stood on the cobblestones just in front of the camp where SS soldiers would randomly execute prisoners upon arrival. I walked through the gate that boldly read “Work Shall Set You Free.” I saw the tables where people were told to empty their pockets, forfeiting whatever remaining possessions they had – clothing included. I saw the sign on the wall that read “No Smoking” – a cruel joke for a huddled crowd who no longer has pockets to call their own, much less a lighter or a cigarette. I stood in the showers where prisoners were shaved and “disinfected” for lice. I walked through the recreations of two barracks, and saw the concrete foundations that were placed in the location of the other 32 – which were missing as they had been torn down in the 1960’s and never rebuilt. I walked past guard towers, saw the barbed wire fences and electrical fences. I walked on the grass...
I walked through a gas chamber, and with tears blurring my vision I looked on the crematorium. Now, the mass killings are more real to me than before. Not that these events were ever any less true, but for me, the Holocaust can is no longer understood through a collection of graphic photos. Something about walking on that soil, wandering through the remaining buildings, seeing photos and possessions of prisoners, hearing individuals’ stories who lived and died on those grounds… Everything that happened that day changed the statistics from numbers into LIVES… And for me, that made all the difference.
I won’t forget Dauchau. I can’t forget it. I want the experience to make me grow, force me to reflect, and allow me to mourn. At the camp, I grieved for the prisoners. For lives lost, changed, torn, ruined. Families forever altered by the events that took place on the very soil I walked over. I want to say “Never Again” – the words branded in one stone memorial in the middle of the camp – but I can’t. For even today, injustice persists.
The memorials placed at Dachau are a completely separate point of interest. There is one particularly graphic sculpture that embodies suffering, turmoil, desperation, darkness. It, probably, is the most famous.
But there is another art form just below the famous sculpture that appears as three links adorned with various colored triangles, depicting the different patches prisoners would have worn. The Dauchau survivor’s committee decided not to place the pink triangle on the memorial (the symbol of homosexual prisoners) as well as the black triangle (the symbol of social outcasts including the mentally disabled and the Roma, or Gypsy, peoples.) Even after such a tragedy, discrimination divides Holocaust survivors – this seems impossible to me.
Both groups performed hunger strikes in front of the memorial – just in front of the roll call area. Hunger Strikes. At a concentration camp. Powerful. The Roma peoples were eventually given “hollow” triangles on the memorial which, when viewed at the right angle, may appear black. And the hunger strike of a handful of homosexual men was called off when a large, pink granite triangle was placed inside in the museum commemorating the lives of homosexuals that were taken at Dachau.
