Writing today’s blog is not going to be as fun as the others were. This blog post will also be shorter than usual because this one event was the only thing running through my mind all day. Today, we visited the infamous Dachau concentration camp. I feel that posting pictures about this day should not be required due to the very dark place that Dachau is.
As I walked from the bus to the visitor center of Dachau, I instantly had feelings of darkness and despair. The weather accompanying us on our visit to Dachau was the perfect weather to really capture how cruel this place was. It was a miserable day full of rain and extremely cold winds. This weather made the whole group think as well. Imagine working in this weather not being fed at all, not sleeping at all the night before, and you only get to wear a shirt, pants, and shoes? I was terrified thinking about where I would even begin if I were put in a position like that.
As we walked throughout Dachau, we learned some very sobering information about Dachau. For instance, in the 12 years that Dachau existed, there was only one man who was able to escape the concentration camp. Out of the nearly 200,000 people who were forced to go to this camp, only one had the ability to escape. He was able to escape in the very early years of the camp as well. This means that when Germany was in nearly full control of Europe, Dachau was on lock-down and virtually impossible to escape. To the misfortune of that one person who did escape Dachau, he was captured and killed shortly after doing the near impossible.
More sobering information I discovered about the concentration camp was that the beds of the camp, that could not even hold myself, had about four people each sleeping in them every night. Those four people were able to fit into a single bed because they were so malnourished. It was said by our tour guide that the average weight of a Dauchau prisoner was only 80 pounds. Imagine how weak these people must have felt after working like dogs throughout the day and only to be served some disgusting soup lacking the nutrients they needed.
The most sobering fact of all that I found out when touring Dachau was that the Holocaust resulted in the death of an Irish person. Why I am so shocked by that information is because Ireland is the home of my ancestors. It is the home of my grandparents who were born right at the very beginning of the World War II era. With this information I began to ask myself if Germany had taken complete control of Ireland during the Holocaust, would I have been here today?
Our tour ended with the visit of the incinerators and gas chambers. Which was the saddest place of them all to look at. The fact that 42,000 people were put through these incinerators over the 12-year reign of Dachau cuts deep into my core. The gas chambers that were built were never used at Dachau and nobody really knows why. Maybe it was out of mercy. Maybe it was never used because most people at Dachau were transported to death camps such as Auschwitz. Maybe the people in charge of Dachau were just happy to see the prisoners suffer a slow and painful death.
After the tour of Dachau, I really can not remember the rest of my day. All I could think about was the depressing things I saw at the concentration camp. I know that the Plus3 program is an educational program, however, I never thought it was going to be educational in this kind of way. Although it was a very rough experience to tour Dauchau, I am extremely thankful for receiving an education like this. Dachau really does serve its purpose today acting as visual proof that something like the Holocaust should and cannot ever happen again.