(Message on the wall behind the tomb of the ashes of the unknown prisoner)
It is plain, non-descript, even somewhat boring. Time has rendered the place inert, and were it not for a deliberate attempt to remember, the Dachau concentration camp would have surely disappeared.
Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “the banality of evil” in reference to Adolf Eichmann, whom she described as a man capable of great evil without thought, whose only passion was to please his masters. There has been much debate about the description of Eichmann this way, but the phrase clearly describes the Dachau camp.
The camp is now a memorial site, with some portions of the camp restored so that one can see the mechanisms of the Nazi “protective custody” program, which allegedly protected political dissenters from physical harm while also protecting the populace of the Reich from subversive ideas.
The approach to the camp is disconcerting. I’m not sure exactly what I expected to see, but it wasn’t this: Dachau is a thriving town, full of manufacturing and commerce, lush and green with nature, alive and modern. I suppose I had always thought that a concentration camp would be established out in the middle of nowhere– somewhere dead, as befitting the place’s purpose.
But the camp is not in the middle of nowhere, it is part of the town. You don’t see it until you are there. Suddenly there are walls and barbed wire and guard towers.
Inside, it is simple, straight-forward, and business-like.
Dachau was not a death camp. Those were all to the east, in Poland. But Dachau was the first concentration camp, built in 1933 at the dawn of the Reich to house political prisoners, then expanded to include Jews and other “undesirables”. Eventually, this would include criminals and the insane who were housed there primarily to make the lives of the other prisoners even worse.
Late in the war, a new building that included a gas chamber was built, but there is no evidence it was ever used for its intended purpose. (The room is still a little unnerving to walk through, however.)
Regardless, about 20% of all of the prisoners that set foot inside Dachau did not leave alive. There were fatal beatings delivered by guards whose only requirement was to maintain order. There were horrific “scientific” experiments carried out on the population. Prisoners were shot to death during real or drummed up escape attempts; Other prisoners committed “suicide”. There were summary executions carried out in the pistol shooting range (target practice!) There was disease and malnutrition and conditions that worsened as the state of the Reich worsened.
And this doesn’t include the atrocities committed against those who somehow managed to survive.
But looking at Dachau now, all of this seems strange and distant. Even the ghosts seem to have abandoned this forsaken place. I am haunted, though, by the realization that this place could have been anywhere. Standing at Dachau, I suddenly saw how easy it was to build such a place– not just physically, but to also build an atmosphere in which such a place could exist.
Dachau is just gravel and stone and wood and steel. Perhaps that is its true message as a memorial. Once men give in to hatred, the road to Dachau is short.
Today, Dauchau is a memorial, and people of many faiths have built places of remembrance. Even these places seem to exist in fear of what Dachau represents and try to blend in as much as possible. A Protestant group has built a stark concrete church which descends beneath the earth to focus on a modern Pieta of Mary holding the lifeless body of Jesus. Catholics have installed a cloister at the edge of the camp, filled with nuns who live in penitent buildings that mimic the style of the camp. A Jewish community has built a highly symbolic structure which descends underground between rails that simulate barbed wire and passes through a heavy iron gate. When you reach the lowest point, you can look up and see light streaming in from a hole beside a stone menorah. In retrospect, I notice that the light of the menorah is not the light at the end of the tunnel– there is no way to reach the light from the bottom. It remains distant, out of touch.
Ultimately, Dachau can only be about remembrance. There is no way to explain what happened there; there is no way to reconcile it; there is no closure for those whose lives it claimed. It is a scar that can only tell us:
Never again.
The Pieta at the Church of Reconciliation
The Cloister at Dachau
The view from the bottom of the Jewish Memorial.
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, for the last 2+ weeks the World Cup of soccer (held only once every 4 years) has been going on in various locations in South Korea and Japan.
