02 Oct

Day 4 – Dachau

 

I woke up at 2 am again! Yikes! But it didn’t take me quite as long to go back to sleep this time!

We got up at 6:30 and headed down to the delicious breakfast again!

This was going to be a rough morning. We were heading to Dachau today, the very first concentration camp. I had been as a child, but I’m sure I was sheltered from the worst of it. I remembered some things, but it in no way prepared me for the emotions of that day.

We had three tweeners on our trip, and the guides told them that they really didn’t think they should go to Dachau, and they had another trip planned for them. In hindsight, they were 100% right. Anyone else that didn’t want to go to Dachau also had an alternative activity option, but all the adults decided to go. It was one of those things that we knew would be awful, and yet we needed to see.

In the same way, if this is too much for you, please skip ahead in the trip report. It’s a lot to process.

I decided I didn’t want to take my camera with me, but I did end up taking two pictures on my phone, and Stephen took a few, and the guides took some.  So I do have a few. But this part is mostly words. I have a lot of them about Dachau.

Michael had been so kind and engaging and funny the last two days, I didn’t know what to expect from him on a day as serious as this. He actually played a huge roll in making today what it was. It wouldn’t have been the same without him.

On the bus ride, Michael started talking to us about Dachau and how Hitler came to power. I thought I more or less understood it, but Michael told us a lot more. While it didn’t make sense all put together, step by step, little things made sense. For one thing, Hitler was given some power in exchange for something he could help with, with the intention of getting him removed quickly. That clearly didn’t work.

I’m hesitant to say it made sense, because nothing can justify the atrocities that happened, but I understood a little more how it happened.

When we arrived, Michael told us that almost all of Dachau was leveled after it was liberated. He said they wanted to hide what had happened because they realized how horrific it was. I wasn’t sure it would be as impactful if we couldn’t see anything original, but it definitely was, and there were a few things still standing.

The person put in charge of Dachau, through another unfortunate series of events, was actually mentally disabled. He’d been in a mental hospital in the past. He ended up writing the manual that all camps used on how prisoners in concentration camps should be treated.

There were signs set up with pictures as we walked through. Michael stopped at some of the signs to show us something, but we didn’t stay and read, he was telling us everything we needed to know and adding his own knowledge to it.  Here’s one of the interpretive signs of the camp.

Main entrance to the camp:

I have to say, having a German lead us through this camp, was so moving. Hearing someone with a German accent telling us these stories and not pulling any punches about how evil it was, was something I will never forget.

This is the courtyard where the prisoners stood for hours while they took roll call every morning and night.  No matter the weather, no matter how little they’d eaten. They were emaciated, freezing, injured, it didn’t matter.

This was a painting depicting what it looked like when roll call was taken:

The barracks were all torn down, but there was one that was reconstructed. Michael said as a history teacher he wasn’t a fan of reconstructing history, so we didn’t go in that one. This does give you an idea of how big the area was.  You can see the reconstructed one at the end.  Or half of it.  There was one on both sides of the trees.  

There were 32 barracks. They put the prisoners that they despised the most in the barracks that were furthest away. They knew the odds were great, that they couldn’t make that long walk to the courtyard every morning, and back at night.

We walked through one part of the museum and Michael described to us some of the tortures they endured. Literal torturing, medical experiments with the knowledge that it would kill the subject, thoughtless murder. Michael had us stop and watch a video with pictures of what the liberators found when they got to Dachau. The shape that the survivors were in. The piles of bodies. There are no words to describe how horrifying it was.

I couldn’t stop weeping, I don’t think anyone could. I could hear the person next to me openly sobbing while we stood there and watched.

It’s just stunning what evil is capable of.

We walked a little more outside towards the ovens.

This is the fence surrounding the camp.

This is looking back toward where the barracks used to stand.

The last thing we saw was the ovens. I actually did remember the ovens from when I was little. I guess that is something you never forget. Michael had us start at one end of the building just like we were prisoners arriving at the camp who were going to be killed. He explained what would happen in each room. How the Nazis reassured them and made them feel like they were going to be part of the work camp, and not killed. They took their clothes, they took their belongings, they cleaned them in the showers, covered them in powder to dry them off, and then led them all naked – men, women and children, into another room as a huge group. Then they sealed off the room and let toxic gas into the room that killed them.

Then they were brought into the room with the ovens that burned their bodies.

But the ovens couldn’t keep up with the number of people they were killing. And the bodies, literally, piled up outside.

It was actually American soldiers who liberated Dachau. They were the first outsiders to see the atrocities that were happening. Michael told us that the suicide rate for those Americans was incredibly high. They just couldn’t process the evil they had seen there. I can’t even imagine.

Dachau was one of only thousands of these camps. I didn’t remember that. It was horrifying to think of.

Here is a plaque dedicated to the American divisions that liberated Dachau.

We walked back through some memorials dedicated to the victims of Dachau.

I don’t say this lightly – I think we walked back to the bus a changed group of people. This day forever changed me. I remember seeing a Nazi symbol on something a few days later (maybe a book about it in a bookstore) and having a visceral, angry reaction to it. I remember when Prince Harry dressed up in a Nazi uniform one Halloween, and thinking at the time that it was pretty tacky. Now I am furious to think that anyone would take that lightly enough to dress up like that.

That day also made me realize that we use the word Nazi too much. We get upset with someone’s political views, something someone said or did, and we call them a Nazi.

Just the stories of Nazis were the most evil thing I have ever encountered. I pray that we never ever have to see evil on that scope again. I don’t think we should ever use that word about anyone that isn’t committing murder and atrocities. It de-sensitizes us to the evil it truly represents. And we need to remain horrified by it all. We need to shudder when we hear the word. We need to be shocked and devastated if we encounter anything like that. We need to be outraged enough that we take actions to ensure it never ever happens again.

When we got back on the bus, one of the guides got on the microphone while we were riding.  She very tearfully told us that Dachau was very hard for her every time she went. She told us how hard it was to know that her grandparents, didn’t see what was happening and do anything to stop it.  She wondered how they were protected enough by the state to have survived.  What role they may have played.  She told us how much shame she carried because of that.

She also explained to us that when she spent a semester abroad in California, she was so surprised by the patriotism that Americans have. We wear American flags, they hang everywhere, we are so proud of our country and what it can be. She told us how different it is in Germany. She pointed out that you don’t see German flags everywhere. She said there is a certain apprehension she feels when telling people she is German. It’s a deep shame they carry for what they let happen in their country.

Most of us were crying again at this point. It meant so much to me that she was willing to share that with us.

The rest of the bus ride was quiet. We were all lost in our own thoughts.

Michael actually said goodbye to us as soon as we got back on the bus. It was so sudden, we weren’t prepared to say goodbye! But if we had all been given time to say goodbye and tell him how much he changed us, it would have taken hours. So this was probably intentional.

It’s hard to jump subject matters so abruptly, so I’ll finish the rest of the day in another post.

Adventuring with Disney in Germany! August 2-11, 2018
Day 1- Travel Day
Day 2 – Or Was it Still Day 1? Hard to Say!
Day 3 – Neuschwanstein – THE Castle of Your Dreams
Day 4 – Dachau
Day 4 (Part 2) – Beer School and Soccer!
Day 5 – Nuremberg Food Tour and Rothenberg
Day 6 – Rothenberg – Hot, Hot Rothenberg
Day 7 – Bamberg and Air Conditioning in Berlin
Day 8- Berlin Tour and Chocolate!
Day 9 – Bikes in Berlin
Day 10 – Travel Home