Thursday, March 6, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
The first hints of winter cold were in the air the morning I left for the Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany. The trip was to be a weekend full of dancing, singing and wild Bavarian fun -- no museums or touristic traipses through assorted landmarkes. Fortunately, I decided to take an afternoon away from the madness of the beer tents and visit the historical Dachau concentration camp.
I knew that Dachau would be a difficult place to see. Years of history classes and documentaries depicting black-and-white episodes of mass anguish and hollow humanity came rushing to my memory. I prayed for strength and the power to understand as I entered the gates of Dachau.
"Arbeit Macht Frei," the phrase "Work Makes You Free" was written over the gate as I solemnly entered the work camp. All gray and deserted, the silence of the land was haunting. I wanted to run away and leave, but a responsibility to face the truths of the past pushed me onward. Walking into the museum, I was numbed by the horrors of life-size pictures hanging all around me. All the death, screams of pain and the piercing gaze on the eyes of the men. Each one passed over this ground and struggled to stay alive.
I stood at the exit from the concentration camp in Dachau and was unable to walk beyond the barbed-wire gates that still remain. Rusted and twisted, they stand like pathetic guards to an invisible fortress of horror.
I remember the pictures -- the young boy's face, hanging lifeless from the sterile laboratory room, he beckons me to stay. He moans, "Never forget, promise to never forget." I wonder what his young life was like before the war.
It was probably very similar to mine -- dreams of traveling, success and love. Yet, tortured, exhausted, terrified, he died. 41,415 innocent men women and children died, all yearning to walk outside the fence, and I stand here able to walk leisurely through the gate. I feel like one of the insidious Nazi guards, standing happy and calculating and free.
I freeze, tears creeping to my eye. The rain begins to fail, and I say a simple prayer of "why?" I walk out. The rain pours down.
archive
