Dachau

Visiting Dachau was something I had been looking forward to since before our trip started.  It was such an interestingly eerie experience that I will never forget.  We had to write a reflection for class so I will be resourceful/efficient(/any other nice word for lazy) and use parts of that for this post. 

Having the opportunity to experience Dachau was an opportunity I will never forget.  Since I have an odd fascination with WWII I was aware of most of what happened at various concentration camps.  I knew the conditions that prisoners lived and worked in, the way they were mass murdered, knew that some were tortured and that they were used as human subjects for medical experiments.  Having seen many pictures from the Concentration Camps and going to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC when I was twelve, I was very familiar with what happened during that terrible time in history. 

            Being at Dachau was different than I expected.  I wasn’t expecting most of the buildings to be gone, but rather was expecting row upon row of bunkers complete with beds and straw mattresses.  Walking in to Dachau and seeing the square where they had roll-call was very interesting as that was the main point throughout the tour where I felt in the shoes of the prisoners.  Seeing that giant, dusty patch of land gave me an eerie feeling and made me think of all the people who saw that square when entering the camp. 

            The rest of the camp was more of a museum than I expected.  I enjoyed seeing all the artifacts and reading all of the information but feel it would have had a greater effect on me if it were in more of its original state and not renovated.  For example, I feel that I would have been more impacted if the shower heads were still in the first room where the prisoners were washed and shaven before being registered.  I had the same feeling with the bunk houses.  It was eerie being in that building but I also felt removed from the past, like everything had been taken away and rebuilt for the public to see. 

            The crematorium and the gas chambers had an odd feeling to them.  The build-up of trees around the area made it feel disconnected from the rest of the camp, like it wasn’t supposed to be there.  In a way it was nice that the place where the bodies were burned was treated like a cemetery but it also emphasized a jarring difference from the way it used to be.  The crematorium was the only spot throughout the camp that I didn’t want to take pictures.  I felt like I wouldn’t be respecting those who had died in the camp if I did so.  With so many un-named individuals being wiped out of existence in that place, I felt the need to give it silent respect and not turn it into a photo opportunity. 

After we left Dachau our guide showed us some places of resistance in Munich.  It was very interesting to hear about some of the ways that people resisted the Nazi Regime in the area where they were most powerful.  While my classes were primarily about art and opera, we focused on art specifically around WWII and how it was viewed by the Third Reich.  I learned a lot about Europe during WWII and the trip to Dachau was a powerful reminder of everything that has happened.