When I was small, I lived in Germany. We visited Dachau. You could still feel the sorrow, pain and death that emanated from everything there, even though the buildings had been whitewashed and the grounds were landscaped and kept well. The barracks were still there, the crematoriums and guards' towers. There was still barbed wire in the no-man's land surrounding the camp.
On the gate was a small sign that proclaimed the biggest lie ever told in history: Arbeit macht Frei - Work makes free.
Near the officers' quarters, now a museum, is a sculpture in iron, by Nandor Glid. It depicts the emaciated people trapped in Dachau's barbed wire, a tribute to those who died there.
If you ever get a chance to go, I recommend it. As one part of the memorial says: "Never Again." History can teach us much about ourselves and our capacity for good and evil. We cannot ignore one part of ourselves. We must learn about what makes us do things that would seem reprehensible to us; what could possibly motivate us to believe in the inferiority of different groups of people and cast them into what could only be described as Hell on Earth. If we ignore our forefathers'/mothers' mistakes and prejudices, then we will have a harder time not repeating them and will surely pass them on to the next generation.
Dachau's Official Site
Dachau History Site - post liberation
The Memorial Site at Dachau
3 comments:
Good post. The picture of the gate is unreal.
I have always wanted to visit one of the camps. My great grandfather hung himself within the walls of one of Hitler's camps. It still amazes me how sick humans can be at their worst.
I'm sorry about your great-grandfather. My grandfather ended up at Buchenwald when he was seving in the Army, but he would never speak of it.
Since my time in Germany, I have a mild obsession with World War II history and have to prevent myself from only posting stuff on that subject. I think one of the reasons I read so much about it is to try to understand it. I'm not succeeding.
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