Visiting Dachau...
May. 4th, 2011 08:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
windinthemaplesOur ten days in northern Italy and Germany were, by and large, not very eventful. We mainly shared the day-to-day joys of living with Daniel's brother and his family--sharing homemade meals and strolling through cobblestone streets in the warm slanting afternoon light. I indulged in long afternoon naps and had gelato at least once (if not twice) a day. At some point I will sort through our family photos and cobble together a sort of travel report to account for those days and share some of their beauty. In the meantime, though, I wanted to jump to the end of the trip when we had a few days in Germany to ourselves and I was able to make the day's agenda. Saturday, we spent the day at Dachau, the Nazis' first, though not most notorious, concentration camp.
I grew up in a racially and religiously homogeneous Midwestern town. I knew nobody from another country, who spoke another language, or who worshiped outside of the Christian faith. My elementary school had one black family and, to my recollection, nobody of any Asian or Hispanic descent. It was my norm. We moved to the Southeast coast of Florida when I was ten and the world literally opened up. I had entered a world of color and language and culture and religion. There was so much diversity in the world and it was my first real sense of being part of it. One of the most striking experiences was that we'd moved to a place with one of the highest Jewish populations in the US. When we learned about the Holocaust in school, we heard it from survivors whose grandchildren and great grandchildren I played with on the playground. There was an immediacy to their stories. There was an urgency for me to hang on their every word. I pursued history in college because I wanted to know (and help record and distribute) the stories of the minorities in history. Not whoever was riding the tide of power and popularity at the time of events but those voiceless at the bottom, the stories from the other side.
I needed to go to Dachau, to see and experience it for myself, and so we did. Going, though necessary, has made the trip to Europe as a whole, almost impossible to talk about.
Graeme took this photo. You can see the foundations of the long barracks, the trees lining the camp road, and some of the reconstructed example barracks near the back.
Graeme's photo of the Catholic faith chapel on the site.
The main gate into the camp.
The beautiful woodland surrounding the hidden crematorium and gassing chamber.
To the left is the Bunker, the main building where new prisoners were processed and bathed and had all their personal belongings confiscated. Many were also tortured (and killed) inside its walls. Today, the museum exhibits are housed inside the restored building.
*
This entry has been open on my computer since I came back over a week ago. I still don't know what to say but I can't get past it until I've said something. So here it is.
I grew up in a racially and religiously homogeneous Midwestern town. I knew nobody from another country, who spoke another language, or who worshiped outside of the Christian faith. My elementary school had one black family and, to my recollection, nobody of any Asian or Hispanic descent. It was my norm. We moved to the Southeast coast of Florida when I was ten and the world literally opened up. I had entered a world of color and language and culture and religion. There was so much diversity in the world and it was my first real sense of being part of it. One of the most striking experiences was that we'd moved to a place with one of the highest Jewish populations in the US. When we learned about the Holocaust in school, we heard it from survivors whose grandchildren and great grandchildren I played with on the playground. There was an immediacy to their stories. There was an urgency for me to hang on their every word. I pursued history in college because I wanted to know (and help record and distribute) the stories of the minorities in history. Not whoever was riding the tide of power and popularity at the time of events but those voiceless at the bottom, the stories from the other side.
I needed to go to Dachau, to see and experience it for myself, and so we did. Going, though necessary, has made the trip to Europe as a whole, almost impossible to talk about.
Graeme took this photo. You can see the foundations of the long barracks, the trees lining the camp road, and some of the reconstructed example barracks near the back.
Graeme's photo of the Catholic faith chapel on the site.
The main gate into the camp.
The beautiful woodland surrounding the hidden crematorium and gassing chamber.
To the left is the Bunker, the main building where new prisoners were processed and bathed and had all their personal belongings confiscated. Many were also tortured (and killed) inside its walls. Today, the museum exhibits are housed inside the restored building.
*
This entry has been open on my computer since I came back over a week ago. I still don't know what to say but I can't get past it until I've said something. So here it is.
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Date: 2011-05-05 12:46 am (UTC)What's amazing to me is that the stakes in standing up in those situations were amazingly high--imprisonment, slavery, death... And yet people did stand up. The stakes now for standing up for what's right are much less--having someone no like you? And yet we'll still be judged by history for our institutionalized racism and homophobia...