Munich - Part I

There were two distinctly different things I wanted to do in Munich, and one wasn't going to be possible on a Sunday. You can tour the BMW factory during the week, but not on weekends. So . . .

At the other end of the spectrum, we decided that we wanted to see Dachau Concentration Camp. Dachau is just outside of Munich -- accessible by the city train. It was the first Nazi Concentration Camp, opened in 1933. It was primarily a work camp -- it's focus was not the extermination of the jews but the forced slave labor of jews, political opponents, preists, and dissenters from conquered lands. Still, more than 30,000 people died and were incinerated in the crematorium at Dachau, and while paltry in comparison to the estimated 1.5 million who were murdered at Auschwitz, it is still horrible enough to make you feel sick.

I think the part that affected me most was the open area where roll call happened. I have seen this enough time in Hollywood movies to have a notion -- despite an inability to fully comprehend it -- of what it was like. To look at this wide open space and imagine the malnourished, the beaten, the broken, the slowly dying.....it was just powerful in a way I can't seem to capture right now. When the roll call number was not correct, prisoners sometimes had to stand motionless for hours while they looked for escapees or dead bodies. I could begin to try to describe the atrocities committed at Dachau as we learned from our tour of the place, but I know that I won't do justice to the history with my limited knowledge. You should look it up and read about it and remember it.

So touring Dachau was profoundly sad, but compelling and necessary. You have to give the Germans credit -- I don't think any other nation on Earth has documented and taken ownership of the atrocities it has committed the way that this country has. It is free to visit Dachau and with the plethora of documentation there, it is completely unnecessary to get any sort of tour. This is undoubtedly the way it should be as it has been made clear that the survivors wanted to be sure that no one would ever forget what happened there. I know that those people who will read this will likely never see Dachau or Auschwitz for themselves, but I can't help but implore you to make something so sad and scary and eerily close in history something that we continue to carry with us for generations as a reminder of our potential for evil.

Before going to Dachau, Sammy and I had already planned that Auschwitz would be one of the few things we wouldn't accept missing while we were in Europe. We both just think it's important to us to see it for ourselves. No amount of reading about it or seeing it in a movie compares to feeling what it's like to walk in the steps of history. I don't want to say that I'm excited about seeing Auscwitz, because that would be a mischaracterization. I think the best way to describe the feeling in words is to say that I am looking forward to contributing my eyes and mind to the cause of those who vow never to forget the atrocities committed in the name of the Nazi regime. I don't know why I am so powerfully affected by what happened in Nazi Germany - nor why I am so drawn to it. I am filled with a sense of overwhelming sadness when I honestly confront what happened to other human beings in these camps. Putting my mind in that place and trying to understand what it felt like to suffer, fear, and prepare to die in these camps is chilling yet also compelling. It fills me with a sense of responsibility to learn more and educate others so that no one can try to deny what happened or allow it to happen under our collective watch again. As we toured Dachau today, Sam asked me, "How long will it be before people stop caring about this?". I pondered the answer. The realist in me knows that at some point, what happened in Nazi Germany will be such a part of ancient history that it will be like learning of witches burned at the stake and the Spanish Inquisition -- things that we are taught were terrible but that seem so ancient and distant as to leave us unaffected if not disinterested. It deeply saddens me to know that this will become a fleeting moment in history -- but understanding it is so pivotal to our continued coexistence on this planet. After standing on ground depicted so horrifically in so many Hollywood movies -- and knowing that this was the place where those terrible things really happened -- I think a part of my soul will forever be engraved with it's memory. It's hard to ignore that power.