This morning we were greeted by beautiful blue skies and the sun shining brightly. It felt strange to be excited to visit Dachau today, but I knew it would feel very powerful to be there and learn more about exactly what occurred at the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany.
The minute we arrived and started walking through, I was overwhelmed by the size of the camp and the feeling of helplessness that I could not shake while being there. I could not get over the thought of being worked to death under any circumstance let alone your religious belief or racial background. Learning about the holocaust in school can’t quite compare to physically being at a site where these ideologies spread and first turned into violent action.
Walking through the bunks and seeing real photos from exactly where I was standing made me extremely emotional. Imagining there being 5 to 6 times as many people here than there should’ve been felt incomprehensible. The hardest part of the day was walking through the gas chambers and crematorium rooms. Although they are almost positive these gas chambers were not used at Dachau the way they were used in places like Auschwitz, it didn’t make it any less terrifying to see it in real life. The concept of being lured into a gas chamber thinking you were being taken to a shower is so heartbreaking because a glimmer of hope in a time of immense despair was just a trick.
Our tour guide was incredible, and I found it especially powerful when he kept repeating the idea that learning about history is the only way we can avoid repeating past mistakes. I left Dachau feeling more grateful than ever for my own personal freedoms but also more sensitive to present-day crises and how easy it would be for them to escalate to a mass tragedy of this magnitude.
The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent working on our project presentation with our group which we followed with a delicious dinner at a restaurant in the city center called Picnic which became a fan-favorite amongst our group. Tomorrow and Tuesday were set to be very early days, so after dinner it was time for bed!
