As I sit here on the Day of Atonement, I reflect on many different topics. But among other issues, I am reminded of my visit only this past week to the Dachau Concentration Camp, my first ever visit to such a camp. This was a reminder of how far human evil can go. On this Day of Atonement, the prayer books have lists of many sins that we, as a community, apologize for -- encompassing a large range of potential evil that we atone for. But even those large lists do not encompass how evil human actions can become. As a world, there are some events that require greater atonement, specifically inhumane slavery and slaughter.
“Arbeit Macht Frei” – I read these words upon the entrance as thousands of prisoners once had. The now-famous phrase which had mocked the ground’s inhabitants introduced me to the original reminder of the Holocaust – the reminder of human evil’s almost limitless potential. For almost 20 years I have studied the concentration camps from Nazi Germany. Raised in a remembering Jewish community, I have read numerous survivor accounts and seen many pictures. I have visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. But today I am at tone of the Camps themselves. And Dachau, too. Although only a small fraction of those murdered by the Nazi actually perished here, Dachau was the first concentration camp and a model for others.
What struck me quickly upon entering was how greatly efficiency could be paired with evil. I see the rectangular roll call area where tens of thousands of prisoners would join together for group suffering. I saw the fence with its guard towers that could so neatly keep thousands inside. I saw the blocks where the barracks once stood in systematic fashion. All so orderly. All so smoothly fashioned for slavery and murder. So perfect fof such evils, and yet Dachau being the 1st Concentration camp, it was built even before an even greater perfection was reached by the Nazis for the act of murder.
I walk through and emotions run through me in a way I am not sure I can adequately describe in words. Renewed thoughts of Astonishment, Horror, Fear, Anger, and Sadness come to me as I again remember the Holocaust. I walk through trying to imagine thousands cramped into this slavery as I walk through. My imagination proceeds to depict Disgusting images of those who might have lived here as zombies, and yet I am sure my imagination is still insufficient to picture the whole picture in entire horrid truth.
I then walk to the 2 crematoriums. The 2nd was built because the 1st was not enough. When man discovered fire it could not have been for this purpose! I also see a gas chamber. Original disguised as showers, this chamber was apparently never in regular use – perhaps there was the slightest bit of divine intervention on grounds where one can now see, among the many memorials, some memorials for religions: This camp, among other purposes, was the one designated for all priests taken captive. And yet despite the gas chamber’s unuse, I still feel the most uneasy energy in the square room. Its design must have retained its vast sense of evil. It was in this room where the idea of efficiency I mentioned earlier was magnified at least tenfold.
And as I sit here contemplating this place, one thought prevails in my mind. At the left end of the main monument of this site, above the ashes of an unknown prisoner, reads the exclamation: Never Again.
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