Munich, the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial, and New Year's!

I cannot put into words the dread and stomach-churning sadness I felt walking up to the entrance of the Dachau concentration camp memorial. This would be the first time I would have visited a Holocaust site. Though I'd been to several Holocaust memorials in the United States, Israel, and Puerto Rico, nothing can compare to the knowledge of walking through a gated entrance where more than 40,000 people left. Some of their ashes are still buried in the cold ground, under a simple headstone, for "all the Unknown." Others' bodies were removed during the camp's liberation in 1945. Today I walked around the "work" and "punishment" areas and through a barracks of stripped and barren bunks, shuffled through the crematorium, and cried and prayed at the grave of the unknowns. The weight of the atrocities committed on every square inch of the land sat on my shoulders until we walked out of the gate. I am thankful that I waited until now to visit a place like this: The timing of the trips I passed on when I was younger would have been inappropriate and I would not have felt the same. 

I walked into the camp barefoot and without a coat. The ground was freezing and rocky, but it was important for me to feel the chill of the land from my feet up to my head. As cold as it was for the two hours that we were there, I can't even imagine the conditions under which the prisoners lived under the reign of the Nazis. Yes, there were photos and video and relics in display cases, but to feel the bone-chilling cold made the history real for me.

In the book of names of all the deceased in all the camps, I grudgingly turned to the page with my last name, praying I wouldn't find it.

I found it.

 Twice.

May their memories be for a blessing - זיכרון שלהם לברכה

Here are some other photos from the day:

VIDEO

One of the barracks left standing on site:

The winged trees lining the rows where the barracks stood.

Memorial statue with the date the camp opened and the year of liberation

This is the Jewish memorial. To the right were two other memorials, providing a space for visitors to pray or take moments of silence and reflection. 

This is the stone proclaiming the entrance to the Krematorium, the site of the gassing and cremation of hundreds of thousands of bodies.

I walked in the closest entrance, the first door. I should have recognized that the chimney was the final room.

These are the cremation furnaces.

The gas chamber. You can see the vents on the ceiling where the poison gas was dispensed and then sucked out once everyone in the room was dead. Imagine the horror of entering what you think is a shower and then choking to death on poison gas... To everyone who operated this facility: Y'mach shemam ("May their names be obliterated")

The grave of unknowns

It is customary for Jews to place stones on a grave or at a cemetery. We use stones instead of flowers because they are everlasting; flowers placed on gravestones will eventually die. Also, the rock was a simple way to mark a grave before traditional gravestones were used. 

Fittingly, the rain came as I made it back to the entrance to wait for the rest of the group. The weather was even more cold and dreary than when we arrived.

That night, we walked to the square in Erding (a township of Munich) for fireworks: a fitting end to the year with a fantastic show!

Happy New Year 2016!!