GUEST COMMENTARY: I remember Dachau

I remember Dachau.

It is either late spring or early summer of 1956 – everything is in full bloom and green. We are taking a vacation through Germany, northern Italy, Switzerland, Monaco, France and Spain. One place we visited today is Dachau. I am 8, going on 9; Doll is about 7. Mom and Dad, I am sure, explain to Doll and me what a concentration camp is. They take no pictures with the Brownie, but I do have a few, vivid images of Dachau to this day.

As we pull up to the camp outside of Munich, I see the greenest green meadows all around – so green, they hurt my eyes. The breeze flows through the grass, bending it softly to its will and sweeps across the meadows like moving ocean waves. It is so calming. I don’t understand why these fields are so green and others aren’t.

One building I remember entering is a small, two-room shed, white-washed inside and out. The foyer is bare – just a room with two small windows, I think, and an exterior door. There is an open doorway on the left. I enter that room. It is not much bigger than the foyer, but it has two pieces of furniture – a pot-bellied stove and a dark-stained butcher’s block. There is a small window – I don’t recall it clearly, though. Either Mom or Dad tells me that this is one of the early crematorium rooms the Nazis experimented with. The butcher’s block is stained because dead bodies were chopped apart on it and blood soaked into the wood. The parts were burned in the stove. I am mesmerized. Dad says, “It took the bodies too long to burn, so they made huge crematoriums.” I stare for a long time at the dark stained wood, and all I understand is that people were chopped up here. I don’t know why.

Later or next, I don’t know which, we visit a large chamber where people were gassed to death. To me, it looks like a huge concrete garage with a low ceiling. I see words written on the gray concrete walls – thousands upon thousands of names. Mom says, “Some people smuggled in pencils and wrote their names on the walls so they wouldn’t be forgotten.” I don’t see any space between the words, not even a tiny space for a fingertip to rest; the walls are so thickly covered with names of the dead. Tears stream down Mom’s face and Dad is so quiet. Doll and I just look at a huge, empty concrete room with a steel door. I am expecting something more. I do not understand my parents’ reactions to all this.

I look up and see deep gouges in the low concrete ceiling. Mom and Dad easily reach up to the ceiling, but Doll and I know our arms won’t touch the ceiling – we’re too short. I wonder about these gouges and then think nothing more about them – they’re just marks on concrete. Before we leave, I hear Mom whisper to Dad in a hushed voice so Doll and I don’t hear (but I do anyway): “They were trying to claw their way out of the gas chamber, M. J.” I hear her statement and ignore the emotion. I don’t understand, but I do know this camp is special – my parents’ quiet voices and somber mood clue me in to treat this location with silent respect. Doll and I are the only children visiting the camp at this time. Everyone else is also quiet. I hear the wind quicker then I hear a human voice.

As we drive away, I see the green meadows and understand now what my folks say: “The people’s ashes were scattered over the fields surrounding the camp.” It dawns on me, this adult knowledge: People were killed here and the killing was wrong.

We drive to the next stop on our vacation, Munich. That part of the trip I do not recall at all.

I do, however, remember Dachau.