A visit to Dachau ... April 30, 1999.
Since I was
in the vicinity, I thought I’d take a look at Dachau.
I’d learned
not long before that my father had been among the U. S. troops that had liberated
the Nazi death camp on April 29, 1945. I just this moment realized the coincidence
that it was April 30, 1999, when I visited. And here—lightly edited—is what I
wrote in my journal about my visit:
Dachau was not all that easy to find (what
community would want to advertise itself as the home of a Nazi death camp?),
but it was worth the effort. Only 3 DM to park, and then a vast area, paved with
gravel. Only two barracks have been reconstructed, but the foundations of the
others remain—as does the crematorium, with ovens in place. There were not many
people there—a few couples, and a school group featuring the usual assortment
of bored adolescents. I found a plaque that said the camp was liberated by the
20th Armored Div., Seventh Army, on 29 April 1945. Such a stark,
banal place, where there was nowhere for screams to echo. Dachau, the village,
has a McDonald’s.
That really
stunned me at the time, the Mickey D’s.
And I think
how inconceivable it would have been to Mary Shelley, traveling through Germany
in 1814, then again in 1842–43, that one day a century later, near where she
traveled, the government of a “civilized” country would be murdering millions
of people.
Photos from that 1999 visit.
No comments:
Post a Comment