background
From our apartment in Sendling, Dachau is only 25 minutes away by car. Even though these cities are so close in proximity, Dachau is an astoundingly much older city than Munich. Where as Munich just celebrated its 850th birthday last year, Dachau reached its 1200th in 2005.
We learned that the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site was a former powder and ammunition factory during World War I. The war ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed and so did the production of ammunition. This made things very bad for workers in Dachau during the 1920s.
How bad? Dachau had the highest unemployment in all of Germany, double the national average. Just as it started to worsen, a new political movement was breaking out in Munich, which led to the formation of the “German Worker’s Party”. The leaders of Dachau abandoned the idea to attract private industry to stimulate their economy and instead chose to convince the Bavarian government to use the old powder and ammunition site for a civilian labor and military camp.* Things unfold from there that were later labeled as “morally corrupt”.
tour
We walked the grounds as a group of 20 some English speakers for two and a half hours. Our guide took us through the history of the camp. I imagined a cauldron of unforeseeable circumstances bubbling in a pit fire beneath tattered shelves barely supporting fragile vials of catalysts.
Reactions were mixed among the group. Most were stoic. Those who seemed in different degrees detached stood out for me the most: With playful disregard, a young man snaps a shot with an extended arm opposite to a goofy smile and a backdrop of barrack outlines. A young college student asks the cognizant German guide if anyone has ever “puked” after walking through Barrack X, to which the puzzled guide responded, has ever what? A new retiree concludes at the end of the tour that all of this resulted from one evil, mad man.
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Is this what it means to be human?
Thinking of all the uniqueness and wonder humans bring to the world, it is hard to image that we are capable of doing this to ourselves. Decades later, we are able to glimpse at our inner beast from almost all angles and still we resort to simplifications. Our collective guilt, our frailties are too much to bear. Can we evolve away from this side of ourselves? Or can we educate ourselves adequately to prevent this from happening again? So far from recent history we have proven we cannot.
Oh man, I hear you on that. When we took friends to Dachau…gosh, four years ago now…I couldn’t understand how a friend of mine visiting from the U.S. could insist I snap a picture of him in front of the crematorium, or anywhere on the grounds, really.
I guess for some people, it’s another entry the scrapbook, and not much of an opportunity for inner reflection.
@cliff1976 I’m not sure how I would have handled that if a relative or friend ask the same of me.
Then I wonder about the tourist who snaps photos of himself at the Great Wall in China. Can I judge? Even though we stand at the very spot where someone was treated as less than human, we are separated by time. I’d like to think perhaps they are capturing a moment and will give themselves a chance to reflect later.
I felt quite a weight on me when I visited Dachau. Don’t remember if I took any photos, if so they were in an artistic style of reflection. Certainly not “here’s me in front of xxxx”
Don’t visit Dachau if you have anything light and fun planned for the rest of the day… it requires serious contemplation…
@Dave That’s true, Dave. We were worn out by the experience and didn’t have the energy to visit the city itself.
When I lived in Germany my many frequent visitors always wanted to visit Dachau. It came to a point where I became very detached – especially after 15 or so visits. Later, I’d just drop them off to visit and I’d have a few beers and lunch while waiting. The truth is, that even something that simple – visiting the site numerous times, will on the surface, de-sensitize you. Those people may seem detached, but it doesn’t mean they’ve lostthe siginificance of the evets that took place there. And for the record, the man blaming that “one person” for the holocaust, is in denial of his own humanity. Each and every one of us has great potential for both good and evil. It’s a scary and troubling thought to recognize that part of our own humanity.
@Anon Interesting perspective to consider. Those that I described as detached from the essence of the memorial although were clearly tourist. They were not ‘detached’ in the sense of being desensitized from numerous visits. I think if these folk really reflected on the significance of the events that took place in Dachau and throughout Europe, they would have left their without shame, incurious and reflexive prejudices in the parking lot.
Thank you for this post, lucid. I have been to Dachau a number of times, but I haven’t enough courage to go to the concentration camp itself. Although mans’ inhumanity towards man is inherent in all of us, for some, like me, it is just too difficult to face.
@expatsagain I really debated posting this because I don’t think my writing does the experience justice. I took me 4 years to pluck up the courage to make the visit. I can understand having reservations. A part of me still feels hollow even weeks later.
I take off my hat to you for going at all, no matter how long it took. Myself, I’m more like expatsagain. I can’t face it, especially as I’m German myself. I’ve done translations for the U.S. Holocaust Museum and that alone was bad enough to give me nightmares forever. However, memorial places like this are necessary — you ask, can we educate ourselves adequately to prevent this from happening again. It hasn’t prevented Rwanda, Bosnia, etc., etc., but we MUST KEEP TRYING.
Thanks Edelweiss . I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself for not going there. Our tour guide read from a diary written by a detainee and that was enough to make things all too real even if I hadn’t seen the grounds. The guide had been interviewing the surviving towns people in Dachau. She said there were still people that denied knowing anything. As she spoke you tell there was much emotion she was holding back -I wondered how she could handle all that she had learned.
I think your writing has done an amazing job of conveying the atrocity at Dachau. I also think it has generated a lot of discussion that shows that this topic, although uncomfortable and unfathomable, is complex and stirs our common emotions of repulsion and extreme sadness. I uesed to teach English, before I retired. and the book Lord of the Flies would always stir up a similar discussion in class regarding the fact that although we are humans, the capability for such evil is in each of us. Edelweiss makes an excellent point about needing to have memorials such as Dachau so that we can hopefully prevent this from happening again–but, for better or worse, man will always have the potential to commit heinous and despicable acts to their fellow man; such is the pity.
It certainly wasn’t one man. Hitler led but a lot of the German people followed. I mean no disrespect to the Germans of today, but they’ve got some ghosts to deal with for a long, long time.
@A Free Man All the while, the USA and the Catholic Church stood by and watched. Ghosts should be dealt with all around.
A few months ago, an Austrian B&B refused to rent rooms to a Jewish family because they were Jewish. It made the news, it is illegal in Austria, and there were no consequences.
It isn’t ghosts, especially in Europe.
@G Certainly not. Prejudices are alive and well. I’m perturbed that a government supported tourist association would defending ignorant, private business owners for exercising their right to choose or refuse service. Sure as an individual they can turn away business because they’re too dumb to know any better. Still this kind of attitude is all kinds of bad for the larger society and these maladroits ought to be blacklisted from any and all tourist listings.