Dachau

Today we visited Dachau. As Mr. Omstead shared it was a work camp as opposed to a death camp. It was very sobering. We had a private tour as the camp was closed today to the general public. With only 14 people in the whole camp I think it made it even more sobering. This camp is where Josef Mengale performed his medical experiments. They gave examples of many and it was very gross. I did not realize there were so many colored triangles for different groups. You see the yellow ones for the Jewish people and red for opposition party members but there were many others based on nationality, race, ethnicity, handicapping condition, and sexual orientation. The German people today are very cognizant of their history and Mein Kampf is banned from Germany. Mein Kampf is the book Hitler wrote while in jail in the early 1920s. If you are doing research you can read it at the library but if you are found owning a copy you are arrested. We were at the camp for 3 hours. Some American tourists saw us in the camp and jumped over the fence to get in...I found it ironic that people scaled the fence to get in when so many wanted to scale the fence to get out. It seemed the last place you should climb over a wall to get into. (I know...Ervinish) We then toured Munich in the afternoon and we were taken to many of their important government buildings. We saw the memorials to the people who died under the Nazi regime, we saw Hitler's office, and the area in Munich where the book burnings were...it is now a place of learning with a museum and every year they gather at the same site to read books from the authors whose books were burned. In Hitler's office building there was a memorial in the bottom to memorialize the victims of the holocaust...it is called the Stumbling Steps. I thought this was very interesting. Although a truly horrific part of their history the name says something to all of us...we may stumble in life (and truly very badly) but we should only see them as stumbling steps and as the German people have done...admit the failings of our past while keeping our eyes firmly fixed on the future.