Never Again

We visited a place called Dachau today. It was formerally a World War II concentration camp. The camp in Dachau was the first concentration camp set up in Germany. Originally designed for political prisioners and those who posed a threat to the Nazi party, the camp was to become a living nightmare for Jews, Gypsies, Jehovahs witnesses, homosexuals, and people of a wide variarity of nationalites. The Dachau camp provided the model on which the notorious Auschwitz death camp was constructed.

Going to a place like this is a disturbing remider of the capabilites of human beings. The holocaust goes way beyond 'normal' violations of human rights and dignity. It was systematic, industrised murder. Economic incentives for some high ranking members of the Nazi Party such as Hilmar Wäckerle, Heinrich Wicker, and Wilhelm Weiter were some of the original motives for creating a slave labour camp. Total authority for the Nazi Party was a top priority, and under this premise the camps quickely desended to places of human degradation and terror.
We decided to take a guided tour of the camp. Our guide Steven (which is also the same name as our cat!) was very knowledgable, and he took us through the process which prisoners would be initaiated through. Starting with the SS intergation room, moving on the the shower and de-lousing room, main courtyard, the cramped barracks', the crematorium and finally the gas chamber (dubbed barracks X). As you walk though a place like this you can feel the history. There is an erie sense of stillness, dispite the German school childern milling about (who are required to visit the site by the curriculum). Steven spoke of the process of removing the individual from the self and of the desensitization the prisoners endured in order to cope. It was as much physical pain as psychological which haunted those who were incarcerated here.


"Arbeit macht frei" are the words on the entrance gate, meaning in English "Work will set you free." This was on all concentration camps front gates. Its designated intent was to begin the dehuminazation process. It assumes that thoses who pass though these gates are somehow inferior or unworthy of the full rights of human beings. In some twisted sense of baseless justification it aussumes it was the prisoners fault as to why they ended up here... but with hard work and sacrifice they may be redeemed, both physically and spiritually. These words are in line with Nazi ideology and their ideals of racial superiority.

Overall, we were glad to visit this historical site. At the end, Steven really emphasized that the intent of the tour was not to serve a reminder of what happend in the past, but to ensure that something like this will 'never again' happen.