161. Memory of Concentration Camps
Every time I drove by Munich, I was taunted by the city of Dachau on the Autobahn, I had always wanted to go and so today we went to Dachau Concentration Camp, the second concentration camp I visited while living in Germany. The first was Mauthausen, Austria and it was quite an experience. I had first learned about the horrors of the holocaust when I was in Junior High School where we were visited by survivors of the concentration camps, they showed us a propaganda film produced by the Nazis and the black and white horrors I had seen were permanently ingrained in my mind. On the film, they had shown us how they used human hair to fill furniture, used human flesh for lampshades and the hundreds of thousands of emaciated bodies lying in open graves were absolutely graphic and horrifying. They even showed us their concentration camp i.d. number tattoo that was a permanent reminder that the nightmare they experienced had really happened and would be a memory they could never forget. Today, I learned more horrors of this true and tragic history of Germany. That Dachau was the first and largest concentration camps, for not only Jews, but homosexuals, handicapped, political prisoners from over 30 countries and anyone that defied the Nazi regime. Over 200,000 visitors came to Dachau, the total number of deaths were never known (but there were almost 30,000 registered deaths) and thousands suffered from torture, disease and suffering beyond words. As the sign on Dachau reminds us all, “Never Again” we should all remember this tragic event and we should never, ever let this happen again.