Never Again

One of the very different things about traveling in Europe compared to the US or other countries is that there are constant reminders of the aftermath of WWII. Parts of cities still in pieces or areas entirely missing, it is a wonder to think what things must have looked like before the war. With most of the wars being fought overseas, the US doesn't have this same presence or reminder of such a bloody past, and it certainly creates a different atmosphere, a poignant and hard to forget atmosphere.

Today I visited one of the first concentration camps used during WWII just outside Munich called Dachau. Dachau was one of the first camps created, and was used as a model for many subsequent camps. It was the only one though to stay running throughout the war. 200,000 people were incarcerated, and about 43,000 died or were killed. Upon entering the gate, and as I walked around the courtyard, I couldn't help but wonder how many people were insulted, beat up, spat on and murdered on the very ground I was walking on. How much blood literally poured into the ground? How many cries did the earth here of those who suffered? It was an eerie thought. With the sun out, the sky blue, and surrounded by pleasant landscape, tall green trees, a trickling stream and even birds chirping, it felt like I could have been a university campus, not a concentration camp.

Dachau was designed to hold about 6,000 people but by the end of the war, around 32,000 were crammed, starved and dying of disease and hunger. Most of the prisoners were Jews, priests, Poles or Soviets, and they were immediately put to work to build the barracks of the camp. The people were themselves divided in the barracks by race, with German prisoners first, then Jews and so on. There was even a barrack used as a brothel, as women were forced into prostitution to increase labor. The barracks numbered 1 through 3 were the infirmary, where horrible medical experiments were carried out, such as malaria and hypothermia experiments. The whole camp was surrounded by barbed wire, and anyone crossing into the prohibited zone was shot immediately. Some intentionally walked there in order to end their misery.

Behind the barracks were the crematory and gas chambers. Although never actually used, there were about 5 narrow rooms for fumigation, and waiting rooms where they were told to wait and then killed later. At the end of the building was the crematory, the most disturbing part of the whole camp. There were 5 or 6 large stoves, where people were hung in front of. There were so many dead bodies that they had to build another crematory in order to keep up with the burning of evidence.

In the museum, they showed pictures of prisoners beaten, starved, insulted, stripped of their dignity. They were treated like animals, worse than animals, as piles of bodies mimicked trash piles or a heap of dirty clothes. Eventually American troops liberated the camp, with a picture showing hundreds of weak prisoners smiling and waving to the rescuers.

There was a memorial in the camp with the words "Never Again" written. I stared at it for quite a while, and couldn't get rid of the sick feeling in my gut. This happened only 70 or so years ago, and never again should something like this be repeated. Yet, while not nearly at the same scale as the Holocaust, racial, ethnic and religious discrimination, blatant derogative prejudice, is ever the more present. As the US fights its war on terrorism in the name of democracy and freedom, our government tries to portray a group of people as the enemy, so that out of fear and ignorance, people learn to hate what they don't know. Not everyone buys the media propaganda, of course, as shown in the book I just read Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson. Mortenston talks about how hard it was to get funding to build schools for Muslim children in Pakistan because people don't really care about Muslims. He argues that donors are more than willing to give money for Buddhists or Tibetans for example, but Muslims are ignored. Currently as innocent civilians, children and women, are bombed and killed, and with Iraqis being the fastest growing refugee population in the world, when will this stop? Of course it is not just the US who engages in such behavior, with other instances such as civil war in Sudan and Chad, tribes fighting in Kenya, monks murdered in Burma. "Never again" I keep hearing in my head. Never again. I sadly ponder, will we, humanity, ever learn from our past mistakes?

Never again...

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