Reverence at Dachau

"As we visited the different areas--the bathing houses where people were gassed to death, the barracks where people were crammed like cattle, the lookout posts where women, children and men were shot to death, I started to feel overwhelmed. I felt a dropping sensation in my stomach, the hairs on my arms stood at attention, and a weight of sadness lingered on my shoulders. Why them? Why not me? Why did I want to come here? I could almost feel their grief and hear their cries. We were walking on sacred ground, on burial grounds of innocent lives; no one spoke above a whisper.  There was this hushed eeriness to Dachau, as if it were begging for the silence and peace that those killed had never known while there. All I heard was the wind, and the faint crunching of ground beneath my feet."

 

(Memorial Statue at Dachau)

"As we began approaching the end of the tour, I knew only two things were left on the agenda—the gas chambers and ovens. It had yet to occur to me that I was about to visit a place where human lives were treated like firewood and placed in ovens. Despite reading all the books, I had never grasped the thought that those people had stories, memories, families; they had lives with depth equal to mine and they were just as alive as I was. But the ideas finally hit my naive mind as we started making our way over. I contemplated turning around and not even going to see it because I was already really troubled at everything else that I had seen. Thankfully my aunt encouraged me to go see it “It was reality Megan, it is apart of what Dachau is, you need to see it to understand.” So I did. It was haunting on so many levels that I cannot explain, I tried to push the images of dead tangled bodies out of my mind but they would not leave. I stood in pure reverence for all of those people and I cried. I cried for the way that they had to experience life, I cried because of the injustice against humanity that happened right on the ground that I was standing. It was powerful and unbearably sad. Mothers, Fathers, Children, Innocence, Laughter, Happiness, Warm Beds, Full Stomachs, Love, Freedom…taken away, gone. How could anyone possibly create such evil against another?"