Fotografo de Bodas, Santiago

September 4, 2009

I waited a day to write this post thinking I’d be ready today. But, I’m not and I’m not sure if I ever will be. I’m still processing everything that we saw and heard at one of Germany’s largest concentration camps during the Holocaust, Dachau.

As a kid, I read The Diary of Anne Frank and loved it — and that famous line, “Yet I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart,” has stuck with me to this day. Because of that book, I became obsessed with reading books about the Holocaust. So it was a dream of mine to come and see one of the memorial sites some day. I’ll be honest though, most of the books and things that I read were more of the stories of hope and resistance than the gruesome details. Sure, I knew about all the bad stuff, but I choose more to focus my learning on what I saw that talked about the human spirit surviving.

Visiting Dachau was heavy. There is no other word for it. The air was heavy, the mood was heavy, my heart felt heavy the whole time we were there.

As you approach the camp entrance, before you see it, there are railroad tracks, almost totally gone, but still enough there that you can guess what they once were. You’ve seen the pictures enough to be able to remember/imagine the train cars pulling up filled with the dead and half dead prisoners, the most non-living human beings you’ve ever seen. Or if not that, the trains filled with healthy, innocent young men and women who can’t begin to fathom the horrors that await them.

You keep walking and then you see the infamous gate with the words, “Arbeit macht frei,” or “Work shall set you free,” the same as the gate at Auschwitz. Tourists close it to take photos, sometimes they shut it and as they do you you can feel how ominous that clanging metallic sound must have been to the prisoners. It’s a bright day, with a blue sky, yet you start to wonder why the sun is shining.

The museum is extremely well-done, although a little bit overwhelming. But how would you not make information about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people overwhelming? Impossible.

As you walk along through the bunkers, you read information in each one on little signs.

“Prisoners were given only 1/6 of a loaf of bread a day to eat, along with an extremely thin soup, that became more and more watered down as the war went on. Select prisoners were put on kitchen duty, in this room.”

“Prisoners wore the same clothes without washing for months on end. Because of bad hygiene diseases spread quickly. Typhus ran rampant. Hundreds of people fill ill with typhus and because the S.S. guards would not go near the quarantined areas, prisoners began to conduct secret meetings, in the room.”

“Army generals wanted information on the effects of high and low altitudes on their soldiers so experiments were conducted out on prisoners. They were excruciating and dozens of the prisoners died, in this room.”

….IN THIS ROOM.

You are reading about these atrocities and then all of a sudden it hits you that you are standing in the same spot where they actually happened. I’ve never felt that kind of crushing weight on my soul before.

I’m not Jewish, nor do I have close ties with the Jewish communities. I have one good Jewish friend, that’s all. Simply put, as a human being, visiting Dachau was hard to bear. And Seba and I both noticed that the majority of people visiting the camp seemed to be young. Maybe it a coincidence of the day we happened to be there. Or maybe not. Maybe young people feel more of a responsibility to never let something of this magnitude happen again. Or maybe not. After all, Darfur and Kosovo happened on this generation’s watch.

They show a movie in a small cinema that they’ve built in the middle of the one of the bunkers. They talk about the events leading up to World War II and the Holocaust. Faces of the dead flash by on the big screen, photos of the living skeletons. There are about 100 other people in the room with us watching. For five minutes as the pictures go by nobody moves, nobody makes a sound. I’ve never heard a room with so many people be that silent. When the lights come back on, tears are streaming down men and women’s cheeks alike. Because these horrible things, this movie, happened right where we’re sitting.

How could human beings do such unspeakable things to fellow human beings?

Seba and I walk over to the last part of the memorial site — the crematorium. A women is shutting the gates but she says something to us in German. Seba asks her if she speaks English and she motions us through the gate and says, “Five minutes, go quick to that building.” We run up to the crematorium. There are no other tourists inside and our footsteps echo. The first room we walk into houses the ovens and I take a step back because I’m scared — not scared of ghosts, just of feeling such a blackness in my heart. Then we look at the next room and I take a step inside, closer to the sign to read. It says something about the bodies being housed there before they were burned and I can’t breathe, I can’t read anymore. The ceilings are low and I feel claustrophobic. I’m gasping for air, my eyes burn. I’m sobbing silently.

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12 Comments

When I was in Germany, I didn't go to the concentration camps. Part of me wanted to – but part of me can't bear the thought. I am Jewish.

This is a beautiful post though.

Comment by Decoybetty — September 4, 2009 @ 4:49 am

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Betty, I don't think I would've been able to if I were Jewish. It was hard enough just as a fellow human.

Comment by kyleracine — September 4, 2009 @ 4:58 am

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Oh Kyle.
I had to gather strength to open your blog when I read the title.
You had me with tear-filled eyes on the last part.
I feel so ashamed of the Holocaust (and other things in Chile, too). I don't think I can ever get past that shame, even if it has nothing to do with me. Oh yes it does: those who did it were humans, as am I.
What an important thing that you guys went to that place.

Comment by Flo — September 4, 2009 @ 6:31 am

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Kyle, it seems that similar to you, I too was very interested in learning about the Holocaust and read any book I could find on the topic. In college I took dozens of classes on the subject and became somewhat obsessed with learning more and more about the people behind the word and experience. It has become one of my goals in life to visit Auschwitz and Dashau for the mere reason that it affected me so much to just read and research the Holocaust, I wanted to go where it actually happened. I hope to be able to do so at some point in life, but never for any glamorous reason such as simple “research” but to go and pay respects to the thousands of people who lost their lives in the most sadistic ways possible.
I'm not Jewish either but I have many Jewish friends and we always joke how I'm an honorary member of the “Jew Crew.” I have such respect for them and their religion (and I was raised Catholic), that I wouldn't be surprised if I was Jewish in some past life!
Great photography here Kyle and it's so great that you were able to capture this despite the heaviness surrounding you.

Comment by dregonzrob — September 4, 2009 @ 9:10 am

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Beautifully written post about something so horrific. I feel like it's important that these camps are still there, so that people can go and be touched and hopefully be inspired to fight future atrocities, but I can't imagine what it would feel like to actually go there when just reading this gave me chills and made me tear up.

Comment by emilyinchile — September 4, 2009 @ 9:24 am

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I have tears in my eyes now, as well as goose bumps on my skin. I know you felt like you couldn't do your tour justice with your words, but you did. Making your pics in black & white made them 10X more powerful. Why these attrocities took place and continue to take place around the world, I will never be able to wrap my head around…

Comment by GlobalButterfly — September 4, 2009 @ 9:40 am

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This is so well written, and the pictures are hauntingly beautiful. I'm German and my husband is Jewish. He had family in the concentration camps — for all I know, I could have SS guards as ancestors, so I absolutely understand what you mean about having a feeling of responsibility.

I remember reading “Night” when I was a freshman in high school. I refused to read it during class because I sobbed through so much of it. Thank you for sharing this experience.

Comment by kgseymour — September 4, 2009 @ 12:00 pm

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I went there when I was 14 years old. It was my first time out of the states. This is just what I remember.

Comment by ClareSays — September 4, 2009 @ 2:34 pm

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What a powerful post. I was tearing up by the end of it too. So horrific. So sad.

Comment by Ritamae39 — September 4, 2009 @ 6:37 pm

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That last picture is spectacular.

Comment by Jgenivive — September 5, 2009 @ 5:56 pm

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That last picture is spectacular.

Comment by Jgenivive — September 6, 2009 @ 12:56 am

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Like u, Im obsessed about WWII And the holocaust. Im Not jewish but my dad loves history and I was always asking him about hitler and why did he do this to the Jews. Many years later and I still don’t understand it. I’ve never been to Germany but I plan on going to a concentration camp. I know I will cry. I went to the holocaust museum in DC. I planned on spending 2 hrs there. I spent almost the whole day in there. They have a part of a train, beds, uniforms, and what made cry where thousands of shoes from them. The actual shoes from jews that died. The videos had the same reaction no words in a room full of people. There is a sign outside that says: remember what you saw. I think people forget and that is why darfur is happening in our faces. Contrary to Ann frank, I think all humans are bad. We have morals that makes us act the way we do. But if you think about it we have done this all the time: killing each other. The Romans killed christians like animals or crucified anyone. Wars have always existed. The way to fight them has changed but men will always want more power. Que triste casi lloro con este post. Llegue aca x el de Amsterdam

Comment by Cata — December 15, 2010 @ 7:11 am

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