This post was also meant for a while ago, so here goes! A group of friends and I spent four nights in Munich for Springfest, a festival similar to Octoberfest but during spring. I was excited to explore Germany for the first time and learn about that other eighth of my heritage that isn’t Irish. I learned something new that I never truly understood until stepping foot into Germany – that the Germans pride themselves on their consumption of beer and on the number of liters they can drink. To immerse ourselves in this new culture, we spent a great deal of time at Springfest sampling these different kinds of beer.
In the meantime, we did make sure to learn more about Germany’s history. One very sobering experience was spent at the former Dachau Concentration Camp, just north of Munich. Our group spent a half-day journeying to and from Dachau, and, for many of us, this was our first time visiting a former concentration camp. Dachau Concentration Camp was opened on March 22, 1933. What distinguished Dachau from other concentration camps was that it was the first camp opened in Germany and that it lasted through the entire Nazi dictatorship. Dachau served as a model for the design of subsequent concentration camps. It also served as a training school for the SS soldiers.
Even though we were already knowledgeable of the Holocaust, the facts of the tour itself were still difficult to listen to, and my eyebrows became more and more scrunched throughout the day due to frustration. With very little food, prisoners worked until they died, and those who could not work were sent to die in gas chambers in nearby extermination camps. It didn’t quite hit me until I saw actual photographs of happy people before they became Dachau prisoners – so many different people with noble professions who were all forced to suffer unimaginably inhumane treatment. What made me most upset was seeing the crematoriums at Dachau. They were built in 1940 since the prisoner mortality rate at Dachau increased, and the SS soldiers needed a way to get rid of the bodies. Some prisoners were even tricked and convinced that they were about to take a shower; they were instead cruelly murdered in a gas chamber before being sent to one of the crematoriums. From a total of about 200,000 total prisoners at Dachau, 41,566 of them lost their lives, even though Dachau was not technically considered an extermination camp.
Even though we were upset to hear the various facts and figures of the tour, we were comforted knowing that we were present on a special day – April 29, 2013, the 68th anniversary of Dachau’s liberation by American troops in 1945. I could sense so much inspiration and hope in the photographs of the liberation – how wonderful it must have felt to free those prisoners. Until 1948, the space was used as a prisoners’ camp for the Nazis. Afterwards, it was turned over to the Bavarian authorities to be used as a refugee camp.
Another inspiring part of the tour was the description of the actual memorial itself. Our tour guide stressed the importance of never forgetting what happened. Many people wanted to do away with the land of a former concentration camp; at the same time, however, the memorial is needed to recognize those who died and to ensure that something like this never happens again. The memorial itself included a downward slope, symbolizing the descent into hell. Stick figures were wrapped around each other, representing prisoners who tried to escape but were caught in the barbed wire surrounding the camp. On the other side of the stick figures, the following quote was also displayed in French, German, and Russian: “May the example of those who were exterminated here between 1933 – 1945 because they resisted Nazism help to unite the living for the defense of peace and freedom and in respect for their fellow men.” On one side of the memorial, the phrase “Never again” was also expressed in Hebrew, French, German, and Russian. That two-word phrase by itself was incredibly powerful; it literally chilled my bones.
Some local Germans told us their belief that Hitler had nine lives; he experienced so many near-death occurrences, yet he always managed to escape alive (until, of course, he ended his own life in 1945). It was mind-boggling to think of how many innocent lives could have been spared if Hitler’s life were ended a bit earlier. Nonetheless, with the description of the memorial, our tour managed to end on a positive note; it raised my own personal awareness of our responsibility to protect and take care of each other across the globe.
