I fell in love with World War II when I first saw the movie Pearl Harbor. I was young, impressionable, and saw the romantic side of war. Then I took an interest in the Holocaust and read ‘Anne Frank’ cover-to-cover no less than three times. My interest in the time period has continued to grow, and so while we were in Germany, I knew that we could not leave without touring a concentration camp.
We decided on Dachau.
Dachau was the very first concentration camp to open in Germany. Over it’s twelve years as a concentration camp, it took prisoner 206,206 prisoners and brought death to 31,951 human beings.
“work sets you free”
It’s one thing to learn about the Holocaust in a classroom, or to read about it in a book. Then, you learn the facts, and you feel sad, and you wonder how people could do something so terrible to other people.
But it’s something entirely different, so very, very different, to see the barbed wire fences lining the grounds that were intended to keep people trapped. The despair that seeps into the deepest part of your heart can’t come from watching a documentary about the Holocaust—you have to stand at the entrance of the crematory that burned thousands of bodies.
You cannot fully understand that this was real until you see the stacks of glasses, clothes, shoes, tooth fillings, and hair that were robbed from these souls.
And that’s why it’s so important that these camps were made museums, that things were salvaged, and that the public is encouraged to go. Because this cannot happen again, and we cannot forget the suffering that took place a short 67 years ago.
My Dad served a military tour in Germany in the 1970 near Dachau. At the time, he said every time it rained in the town the cars would still be covered with the ashes because there had been so many from the crematories. He said the smell from it got into places like cigarette smoke smells get stuck into things.
ReplyDeleteI have seen my father cry very few times in my life and this was one of them. I can't even imagine, but I am so proud I had two grandpas go through D-Day and help liberate Germany.
Other Autumn, thank you for sharing your dad's story! So incredible to me what others have seen and lived through. I could sit down and talk to veterans for hours.
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