Today we visited the Dachau Memorial Site. As we approached the camp grounds, I felt the silence and emptiness of those who walked here before us. As we went through the tour, our tour guide gave us an overview of Holocaust victim testimonies and general history during the time. I took note of the way, our tour guide repeated the phrase “I will not apologize for being German” several times throughout the tour. He went on to explain that the Holocaust is a tragedy that should never happen again through education, responsibility, and human rights advocacy. As we entered one of the prisons on the Memorial Site, I took note how suffocating the space felt once we were informed of how the facilities were occupied 5-6x the proper capacity. As I walked around, I struggled to picture over 2,000 men all using the bathroom of such a small size. Hygiene is a fundamental human need that one of the many factors used by the SS to control prisoners by overcrowding barracks, restricting their access to proper hygiene, and subjecting them to sanitary living conditions.

After spending years learning about the Holocaust in school, I now feel like I have a more informed perspective on the atrocities that occured within these walls and beyond. Walking through the camp, I was able to contextualize the events I previously learned about within the scale of the prisons we walked through. To read about the brutality of the Holocaust was does not provide the same capacity to tangibly feel how small the rooms the prisoners lived in were. I believe this history should be shared and not didden to guide younger generations in learning about the Holocaust and learning what we can do as a society to prevent another Holocaust from happening , I’m incredibly grateful for this opportunity to broaden my horizons by expanding my education on the Holocaust beyond school.