7-16-04
Weather: Sunny
Current Location: On the bus, driving to Rothenburg.
Current Time: 3:35 pm CET (8:35 am CST)
Current mood: Sad/tired
Current music: "Prayer of the Children"
We visited Dachau today.
How could anyone cause another person, or group of people so much pain?
My first impression of the Nazi concentration camp, Dachau was of emptiness... For in the whole space of the first camp the Nazi’s build, only the officer buildings, and 2 prisoner cells remained. There was a courtyard covered in gravel. On one side, nearest to the officer buildings was a monument to the martyrs who where killed, or died there during the war. On the monument was written, in several languages: "Never Again." Father on was a large morbid metal sculpture depicting the dishonored, twisted, dead bodies there were so carelessly discarded during the time of the Nazi occupation.
The officer building had been converted into a museum, informing of the prisoner’s daily life, the hard work, starvation, the sickness, beatings, mutilation, despair, medical experimentation, constant aura of death, and merciless soldiers, and the murder of thousands of lives... The faint hope of liberation...
At 1:00 pm our group watched a film about Dachau, showing what it was like to live there, what the prisoners did, showing what it was like to die there...
After the film, we went to a special church on the other end of the camp, built to honor the prisoners who stayed at Dachau. The choir was to sing "Prayer of the Children" there.
To get to the church, you had to walk past the courtyard, past the remaining prisoner housing, across what was left of the other prisoner housing to the church, the guard towers, and barbed-wire lined fences keeping a morbid vigil as I walked past.
As I walked across the courtyard, I could see in my mind’s eye, the rows and rows of skeletal prisoners... The heartless Nazi guards patrolling the ranks, as roll call was held... The prisoner’s ghostly faces staring straight ahead, hoping the guards would pass them by.
As I walked past the prisoner housing, into the open space that used to hold more similar housing, I began to realized how horrific everything was. The very air and ground seemed to cry out with the pain and horror, the sadness and injustice of the dead prisoners... I gazed upon the rows and rows and rows of long raised cement rectangles, left in place of where the prisoners would sleep, and was left to imagine how ANYONE could come out of this alive... How ANYONE could be so in humane to do this to a person?
In the church, as the choir sang "Prayer of the Children" the whole room filled with the power of music, as we tried to honor those who suffered and died there.
As I glanced around the room, amid the tears streaming down my face, there was not one person who was not expressing sorrow in some way...
Sam Newport saw that I was crying and came over and gave me a comforting nudge... As the song continued, she began to cry as well, so I gave her a comforting nudge back, When the song ended, after the last notes had died away, all that could be heard was the constant sniffing of about 100+ people who were crying... All mourning the injustices that were done to those people during the World Wars. A group of girls were huddled around Takara, who was sobbing so hard she was shaking, and this guy, Cress was kneeling on the floor, in prayer, crying as well. The group with Takara slowly began to move to the exit, and Malynda saw that I was crying, and gave me a hug. We slowly filtered out of the church to head back to the bus.
Walking back across the now empty prisoner housing I realized that the grass. weeds, even some dandelions would not have been there during the time the camp was in use... The prisoners would have eaten them all... So in it’s own way, nature honors all the prisoners who stayed there.
~Schnoebbles
No comments:
Post a Comment