My brother, his wife, and their son spent the first several days of this year visiting parts of Germany and Austria. One stop was at the notorious Dachau concentration camp. Following are my sister-in-law’s impressions of a truly wretched place:
DACHAU CONCENTRATION CAMP
Just Outside Munich, Germany
January 1, 2009
By Emily Pomeroy
My impressions of Dachau:
The churches were locked. I couldn’t, still can’t, understand that. We walked up to each one, Russian Orthodox, Protestant, Catholic. All had signs for services on certain days, but all three were locked. Churches are locked in America because people might come in and steal something. Maybe it’s the same for these churches, but they are in the middle of a famous concentration camp and I don’t think that would be a problem.
I guess it was a problem for me. I wanted to go into a place that symbolized goodness and hope. I didn’t care which denomination it happened to be. I immediately felt a need to remove myself from this place.
Then I realized that it wasn’t about me. It was about all of us and the need to acknowledge and remember what had happened here.
Most people walk right on by the churches and start the tour with the crematorium, gas chamber, rooms where the bodies were stacked. There were six large furnaces and four bodies were cremated at a time in each one. Outside was the old crematorium, but they had to build the new big one because the old one couldn’t handle the number of bodies. They didn’t gas anyone at Dachau, or so they say. The people died of torture, suicide, starvation, experimentation, the elements or natural causes.
You can go on line and read volumes about this place Dachau. It operated from 1933 until the American troops liberated the prisoners in 1945. It was the training camp for all the other concentration camps and smaller facilities in Germany. Here they designed the gas chambers and trained those who would carry out the orders to torture and maim.
You can read opinions as to how such an awful crime against humanity could ever have been allowed by a civilized, educated, primarily Christian population, by the people who have blessed us with great music and art. Monetary inflation, loss of work, fear all played roles in the set up to the political climate that allowed Jews, Poles, gypsies, Russians, gays, and others to be viewed as enemies rather than fellow human beings. There was even a notation that one prisoner was Irish.
It was bitter cold with a light snow falling, almost too cold to snow. We entered one of the barracks that has been preserved. Sleeping dormitories were reconstructed to show how many people were housed in a room from the beginning of the camp until 1945. In the later years there weren’t separate bunks, only three story sleeping lofts.
We toured the museum and saw the administration center where the prisoners were first brought in for processing. We went through several rooms filled with artifacts and photos depicting life and death in the camp. Finally, there was a film that was taken on the day the U.S. troops liberated the prisoners.
We have been told that all German school children are required to visit these memorial concentration camps. My feeling is that all children and adults should visit such a place. It’s too easy to look the other way. Right now our world is full of the same kind of atrocity. We kill and maim throughout the world for power, monetary gain, and, yes, even in the name of religion. The Germans are brave enough to understand the possible evil within, while for most of us we choose to look the other way.
Every great religion tells us to love God and one another.
It was a bleak way to start the new year. As we walked there, I asked God to hold dear all those who died in that awful place. We did find the Jewish memorial open. It too was a bleak looking structure, sort of dark and foreboding. But, once down inside its walls one could look up as a beam of light penetrated an opening in the ceiling and shown into the darkness.
There is always hope for mankind, for each of us, one person at a time.
Note: on our return to Apple Valley there was a news article in our local paper about a Swastika that was painted onto a stop sign during the holiday. We can’t look the other way.
Posted by Jerry Pomeroy in Guest Authors