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Published: January 30th 2008
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Gate entering into Dachau
states "Arbeit Macht Frei" or "Work Will Set You Free." Warning: This blog is depressing. We did the trip to Dachau on December 25th, and the trip to Prague 5 days later.
Throughout our travels in Europe, we have taken time to visit reminders of human-kinds occasionally destructive nature. In the Netherlands, we visited the Anne Frank House, and witnessed the fear, the intimidation, and the spying that infected every day life of those people living under the Nazi regime. In the Munich suburb of Dacchau, we toured the Dacchau Concentration Camp. In Prague, we witnessed the destruction that continues today due to the Holocaust.
It should be noted that the Holocaust is not the only example of genocide in our world’s history. While the Nazis systematically murdered 11 million people, including 6 million jews, more than 60 million people died as a result of World War II.
* The Russians under Josef Stalin systematically murdered between 1 and 8 million people during the Great Purge during the 1930s.
* Pol Pot murdered between 750,000 and 1.7 million people between 1976 and 1979.
* Following the coup d’etat led by the CIA against Guatemala’s democratically elected government in 1954, Guatemalan death squads murdered
Dachau Memorial
Designed by a former Dachau inmate, the sculpture represents those prisoners who gave up and committed suicide by throwing themselves onto electric fences that surrounded the camp more than 250,000 people from the 1950s through the 1990s.
* The Serbs mass murdered more than 8,000 Bosnians during the 1990s.
* Rwandan Hutus murdered more than 500,000 Rwandan Tutsis in 1994.
* In Darfur, the Sudanese have murdered more than 200,000 people since 2003.
Dachau The Nazis established the Dachau concentration camp in 1933 to imprison people who had spoken out against the government, political opponents such as Communists and Christian Democrats (a political party, not a religious organization), insane people, and traitors (such as homeless people who refused to work and contribute to the state - and homosexual people who refused to provide children for the good of the state). The primary purpose of Dachau was to intimidate Germans who might consider speaking out against the Nazis.
It worked.
Dachau was designed to house 5,000. However, near the end of World War II, the Nazis had to abandon other concentration camps as Russian, British, and American troops liberated the camps. Because Dachau was in the heart of Germany (close enough to Munich to be near a Munich subway stop), the Nazis forced healthy prisoners to march from the soon
Dachau monument
Monument to the victims of Dachau to be liberated camps to Dachau. Near the end of World War II, Dachau was at times home to more than 40,000 prisoners. When the US Seventh Army liberated Dachau in April 1945, the American troops discovered 32,000 malnourished inmates. Due to the horrendous sanitary conditions and months of starvation, many of the rescued inmates continued to die after liberation as American doctors struggled to save people from dying from Typhus and extreme starvation.
Prior to our German travels, we watched a BBC movie about the British armies liberation of Bergen-Belsen. The movie was about the doctors who struggled to save extremely sick and starving people. According to this movie, you cannot just save a starving person by feeding them. Because the person has experienced such tremendous physical stress, their bodies actually reject food. In all of our prior studies of the Holocaust, it had never occurred to us that the medicine and food provided to these victims was almost as dangerous as the starvation and disease inflicted upon them by the Nazis.
Nearly every atrocity that occurred during the Holocaust, occurred at Dachau first. Here, the Nazis worked people to death, starved people to death,
shot people, and conducted medical experiments on previously healthy people. The Nazis did not gas people though.
Prague's Josefov In Prague, we visited Josefov (or the Jewish Quarter). Prior to Czechoslovakia’s annexation by the Germans in 1938, more than 110,000 Jews lived in Prague (one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe). Prague’s Jewish neighborhood was vibrant. Franz Kafka, the author, was a resident. Josefov has a rich collection of architecturally significant buildings. During the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler intended to turn Josefov into a museum to the extinct race of Jews (which is why Josefov’s beauty still exists today). The Nazis actually imported Jewish artifacts from all over the world to display in Josefov. Unfortunately, Hitler was largely successful, as less than 15,000 Prague Jews survived the Holocaust.
Our first stop on our tour of Josefov (after Franz Kafka’s house - which is now a restaurant), was the Maiselova Synagogue. The Maiselova Synagogue sells tickets to the Jewish museum, a museum that covers several Jewish synagogues, the Jewish cemetery, and Jewish Ceremonial Hall where the Jews would prepare bodies for burial (these were people who would have died from natural causes prior to
the Holocaust). The Maiselova Synagogue also houses a tremendous collection of artifacts, robes, chairs, stars, paintings and other exhibits that you would find in a Jewish museum.
From the Maiselova Synagogue, we walked a few blocks to the Pinkas Synagogue. The Pinkas Synagogue is notable, because the Synagogue has printed the names of all of Prague’s victims of the Holocaust. More than 80,000 names are printed throughout the Synagogue, including the names of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s grandparents. A room upstairs contains a collection of drawings and waterpaintings. These pieces of art were created by Jewish children from Prague who had been interned the Terezin Concentration Camp north of Prague. The horror, fear, and even humor of the drawings and paintings are extremely moving. Unfortunately, as far as we can tell, the Pinkas Synagogue’s sole purpose is to act as a museum.
At the end of our tour of Josefov, we finally found a Synagogue that continues to serve its purpose as a Synagogue. The New Synagogue was built in 1270 in gothic style. The interior, while smaller than many of the Christian Cathedrals that we have visited, is still breathtaking. Vaulted bays divide
Old Jewish Cemetery
with the Pinkas Synagogue in the background the synagogue into 12 sections. A large altar fills the middle of the Synagogue. Near the altar, a flag given to Prague’s Jews by Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI in recognition of their defense of Prague against a Swedish invasion, hangs proudly.
Josefov has probably had the most profound impact on me personally. I have previously read several books about the Holocaust in addition to taking a class on the Holocaust from a world-renowned Holocaust historian. While walking through Dachau’s show chamber, torture rooms, and crematoriums is a very solemn experience, Eli Weisel's
Night and Primo Levi's
Survival in Auschwitz paint an equally tragic picture. However, no books prepared me for Josefov. A place where many Jews used to live. A place where Hitler intended to convert into an “exotic museum of an extinct race.” A place that is, at least within Prague, an “exotic museum of an extinct race.”
We have mixed feelings about visiting this museum. What do you think?
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everett
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Your words and photographs are humbling. Your trip is an experience that cannot be truly recreated, and I can't imagine the raw emotion one feels when seeing such horrific sights in person. I think the museum serves a very important purpose, albeit to remind the world of such utter inconsideration for human life. Let's hope it continues to serve that purpose, however, so that the individual may feel empowered to prevent such atrocities from happening in the future. Unfortunately, the U.S. still prefers to look the other way far too often. That is why it is indeed up to the individual to shoulder responsibility for fellow human beings.