One of the things that we learned pretty quickly upon arrival in Munich is that there are a myriad of great day-trip options. We couldn’t do them all. In fact, we could only do one and Dachau concentration camp was a place that we decided we really wanted to see. As much as it is true that whimsy is a beautiful characteristic of Bavaria, it is also true that there is a dark and sad history that simply cannot be ignored.
We took a train out to Dachau on a cold, snowy day. We acknowledged that the weather was incredibly appropriate for the experience we were going into. The first thing we saw at Dachau after entering the gate with the notorious slogan on it is a giant field where prisoners had to come and stand every day of the year in their meager clothes. Some froze to death or fell over from weakness on the roll-call yard. We saw the prison inside the camp, where many famous prisoners were held. We saw the gas chamber, which we had to walk through quickly because it was just too eerie, and the crematorium. We saw the barracks where an insane amount of people were crammed into a small space and the small strip of yard where most executions happened.
The thing that stood out to me about Dachau is that the victims there were not only Jews. In fact, it was one of the first camps set up as a “red-education facility” for political prisoners within the Third Reich. The blueprint for the mass torture and murder of Jews throughout the war was the concentration camp that was originally set up for Germans.
The question that swirls in Munich and Dachau is “How in the world did Hitler come to power?” How can a man with no hidden agenda, in a modern intellectual society, be voted into power. The answer is convoluted. But, basically, after the embarrassment of World War 1 and the suffering pride of a ruled Bavaria, many citizens were hungry to regain power and identity and were willing to go to extremes to get it.
Hitler and the Nazi party had to occupy Germany first. Standing in the cold at the roll-call field, I imagined Jews and Poles and Germans, all unsure of exactly why they were being treated so harshly. Of Hitler’s conquest, the first one – the occupation of Germany – is perhaps the most tragic, because the Germans were most equipped to stop him. But pride and misplaced patriotism gave Hitler the office. And once he held it, he would not let it go.
Dachau was one of the first camps and the only one to survive the entire length of the war. It was a place whose ‘successes’ served as the blueprint for the way camps throughout the Third Reich were to be conducted.
Sometimes the thing that we want blinds us to the method in which we are pursuing it. This was my big takeaway in Dachau. The people of Germany (not all, of course) wanted something and wanted it badly enough to allow atrocity to be their vote. Many Germans realized the mistake their country had made, but Hitler’s quick and harsh treatment of rebellion made revolution from within extremely difficult, a dangerous idea let alone practice.
It frightens me to look at my life and wonder what thing I am wanting so bad that I am willing to be blinded of my methodology toward getting it. I want validation so much that I will put down or alienate my wife or my friends to make sure they aren’t getting it over me. I want to be happy so badly that I will refuse to go where God is leading or refuse to hear His Vice, numbing myself to the Divine, in order to achieve the placid happiness that fits my comfortable understanding.
It is ugly and it is scary. It might be my biggest fear, being blind to the ways in which I am hurting others or ignoring God. Dachau represents the horror to which we can extend as humans if we do not check ourselves to our own blindness and short-sidedness.
I had a strange urge while we were in Dachau. Standing on that roll call field, I wanted to take off my warm clothes and stand there for just a minute in the cold. I wanted to feel what those victims felt. But I couldn’t. I’d know my coat was soon to come. I’d know my wife was next to me and that we’d be holding hands in just a few minutes. I can’t begin to experience, or even imagine what the victims of Dachau went through. The truth is I’m not nearly afraid of being a victim as being a perpetrator. All I can do is learn from it, to pause and check my motives, my methods, and my aims. And make the changes I need to, before it is too late.
