Today we visited the first created concentration camp: Dachau. This was actually the second concentration camp I’ve seen, but that did not make it any less eye opening. It makes all of the war stories so much more real when you can literally see where they took place. Three specific things that struck me were the crematoriums, the gas chamber, and the barracks.
I stood in this room for a while just imagining what it would’ve been like during the war. The horrible smell in the air, the heat of the furnaces, all while corpses are being dragged into the room and thrown into the furnaces 2-3 at a time. It’s almost impossible to imagine this happening.
This gas chamber was disguised as a shower room so that prisoners would willingly enter. Then the guards would shut the steel doors and everyone inside would soon be dead. It sounds like a horror movie, and it really puts your stomach in a knot to actually stand inside this room and try and imagine how this could happen.
These barracks were each designed to hold about 200 prisoners, but by the end of the war they each held about 1600. These extremely tight living conditions resulted in a variety of diseases that ended up killing thousands of prisoners. We think dorm rooms are tight, but these prisoners had absolutely no space of their own.
This was a very somber visit, but also a very educational one. I think it’s important to visit and learn about these sites so that we can embrace what’s happened in the past and remember to never let it happen again.