Jahrbuch 2015-2016

65 Schule A Day in Dachau I’d studied German history for a quite a while before receiving the opportunity to experience Germany through St Mary’s and Schloss Neu- beuern’s exchange programme and when they asked whether we wanted to visit the nearby Dachau concentration camp, I didn’t think twice about saying yes. The thing about textbooks is you can read millions of them but never get the full picture. So, we gathered together in a small group from the international department on the icy Thursday morning and disembarked towards the Dachau district. As we drove closer to Dachau, I tried to place myself in the shoes of a Jewish girl who was being transported from her Ghetto to a place she has no information on, through icy winding roads and endless horizons of trees, without anyone to help her, just holding onto the hope of greener pastures and new opportunities. We soon arrived and stopped amongst a group of tour buses and eager tourists. The day was fittingly dark and somber and the sun was shyly hiding behind a foggy sky. The cold hits you hard as you walk onto the gravel road and you could just barely hear the sound of the students complaining about the freezing temperatures. I just shuddered to think how my Jewish girl would’ve felt walking down this path of destruction after being thrown out of the bus in her tattered clothes and trying to hold onto her quickly fading smile, feeling the cold air suffocate her as she accepts her fate. I walked with the group through the main entrance of the camp, through the tall steel gates ironically marked with the phrase “Arbeit macht frei” (work sets you free) and then into a large open space with buildings on either side. It’s almost as if the world becomes monotone once you walk through these gates, everything just becomes lifeless. We then entered a building built by the prisoners of the camp to serve as a maintenance building during the expansion of the camp in 1937. The first room contains a large map displaying thousands of little dots repre- senting every concentration camp that has ever existed, each one helping in the collective genocide of 11 million people. There are posters hung from the ceiling in every room explaining what life was like in the camp and giving insight on those who lived in Dachau. As I was reading, I could feel myself shivering which was strange since there were heaters on every side of the room yet it still felt ice cold. There were so many large windows around but it was still dark, nothing but the cold sunlight falling dimly on the cold grey walls and I could swear that you feel the suffering with every breath taken. I kept reading and found out that people were taken straight to this building from the buses and trains. They were separated from each other, stripped of everything they own including all their clothes, given the false impression that they would one day receive their belongings back and were then sent in for disinfection. This included shaving their heads, washing their naked bodies with disin- fectant and then marking them. My Jewish girl had now left her old self behind. She was prisoner no. 1156 now, nothing more, nothing less. The next room was empty except for a row of glass boxes in the center it and the walls had been stripped of their paint. The boxes contained belongings of several prisoners of Dachau, everything from Insurance documents to crucifixes but the most harrowing thing was all the letters that were placed in those boxes. Letters containing messages to loved ones that never reached them, so many things that were left unsaid, peo- ple who died never being able to say goodbye. My group had gone ahead of me at this point and I walked through the rooms by myself looking at the remnants of those who once lived joyful lives with not the slightest idea of what lied ahead. My footsteps echoed against the grey walls and it felt like the sound grew more intense with every step I took as it contrasted with silence throughout the museum. As you walk through the museum there are several exhibits containing artworks, pieces written by the prisons and even musical scores laid out. It made me think of a quote “Art is our weapon. Culture is a form of resistance.” I’ve always believed that you can break someone physically but you can never break them spiritually and this proves it. Even though most of them were on the brink of dying, they kept drawing and they kept writing because they knew that, that was one thing that the SS soldiers could never take away from them, the one thing that kept them from turning into animals. The last room contained a board explaining the atrocities committed on the prisoners of the camp, experiments that included injecting prisoners with malaria and then using their blood to infect mosquitos or submerging them in ice water until their hearts stopped and then at- tempting to resuscitate them. I, immediately felt a wave of guilt fall over me for complaining about how cold I was when I arrived. How dare we complain about things like bad cell service or having too much homework when just over 60 years ago people suffered intensely for no other reason but being born the way they were and still managed to keep their heads held high. At the end of the museum there was a room of remembrance for those whose died in the holocaust. It was filled with artworks, flowers, monuments and at the end of the room there was a computer and a large book. The computer contains a database where you can find family members who were in the concentration camp. The book probably as thick as my palm and was full of names of people who died in the holo- caust, even babies with no chance of fighting back. I’d like to think that that my Jewish girl made it out but then again, so did millions of parents during the holocaust. I walked out of the museum towards the dormitories or my Jewish girl’s new home. The space was so confined that only a handful of tour- ists could enter at a time which only makes you wonder how thousands of prisoners could live in this sardine tin. The place was clean now but during the Holocaust it was drenched with the smell of death and decay as many of the prisoners would die during the frigid night. My Jewish girl would’ve had to strip these corpses of their clothes to be able to survive the evening, leaving a cold lump on the ground waiting to be turned to the dust it once was. At this moment she would no longer be human. She would’ve become what they wanted her to be, a barbaric animal with one with one goal – survival. Once we left the dormitory, we walked down a long road lined with trees along giant monuments where the other dormitories used to be. We followed the road all the way to the fence where large trench and gate awaited us. We walked past the barb wire fence into a garden with lush green grass, beautiful hedges and a small forest of green trees. As my Jewish girl walked onto this road she must’ve thought she was free, she’d suffered long enough and she was finally being rewarded for her struggles and she was now in heaven. She was then told to remove her clothes so that they could clean her off one more time and she delightfully agreed. She was then taken into a room along with a group of other prisoners.The roof of the room was lined with shower heads but as she looked up there was no water coming down from them, she then turned to an old Gypsy woman who was looking at her while shedding one last tear. I just stood in that room and stared and after a while I swear I could hear those chilling screams echoing though the chambers, enough to make the strongest of us fall to pieces. When we arrived back at the information building, the group decided to visit the restaurant which was strange to me because food was last thing on my mind at that point. But as we walked inside we were greeted by a room with large glass windows that allowed the sunlight to brighten the dull, grey walls giving allowing a sense of comfort to fill the space. On every table, there was a vase of bright yellow Daffodils contrasting against the grey surrounding them. I realized then that this monument wasn’t only about remem- bering all the horror but also about commemorating and ensuring that those who we lost are remembered and celebrating them in our thoughts and memories. Those yellow Daffodils are a symbol for life after death and allowing ourselves to learn from the past to build onto the future so that we can ensure that something like this never happens ever again. After all, we owe it to my little Jewish girl and the 11 million who perished for staying true to who they are. Lisa Dreyer