The mediator between the head and the hands is the heart

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5/15/08

I have absolutely LOVED every aspect of Munich! Its beautiful, friendly, they speak English, they don’t take life too seriously and they have a great love of beer which is evident down every street corner. It is unbelievable to me that this is the city where Hitler formed the Nazi party! We have been talking a lot about how really Hitler just was saying what people needed to hear when their money was completely worthless, their first democratic government was failing them, and they desperately needed a scapegoat. Hitler provided one and offered ideas on how to fix their economy. Theirs was incredibly enough, worse than ours right now. Four million Deutschmarks equaled ONE US dollar! Literally it would take a barrel of bills to buy a loaf of bread. Anyway, back to my point, I can’t believe that this is the city of the beer hall putsch! I am walking the streets of Hitler! This is unbelievable! The people here or their parents and grandparents witnessed Hitlers rise to power, and since they are here most likely supported it! Wow…

The next set of shocks from the day come from Dachau concentration camp. On the walk up to the building, there is an apartment complex, houses, and a tennis court! The house was less than a football field away! These are old homes too, so people were living here witnessing the ashes of people rise out of the crematorium. The idea that those living around the camps had no idea what was going on is complete, excuse my language, bull shit. They are unwilling to accept the fact that as human beings they should feel some inner duty to go out and do SOMETHING. I cannot believe people live there now. Knowing that I am living right next to a concentration camp would really scare me. Being a big believer in karma I could not live there. No way. The concentration camp was oddly beautiful. I could not believe it. People say that concentration camps are peaceful and I have seen that so far as well, but they made it a memorial, so the area around the crematorium is covered in flowers, and birds were chirping. The irony was incredible. There was life all around this place of death, torture and terror. I do not think that I agree with doing that. It made it a nice place, like somewhere you could sit and read a book. I actually talked with my professor about this afterwards, and we were really undecided on how we felt. Maybe they took the memorial setting to far here. I am all for statues, but not for symbols of life in a place where thousands died. Also, a lot of people were there today, and they were SO LOUD, and a lot of it was laughter. Again, these are signs of life in a place where that was not the case.

Just want to get this out there… I think it’s incredibly not funny ironic that there are no smoking signs in front of the crematorium. If there are no smoking signs I think they should be at the entrance to the camp. It really just strikes me as if someone had a really sick sense of humor putting up those signs. It was like that at Dachau and Mauhausen.

Something I realized today was that when I thought of people in concentration camps, I always thought of them in black and white, they were never in color in my mind. I guess this is natural since all the pictures of the camps are in black and white. I knew that these were normal people so they obviously were not in black and white. Also, I always pictured the camps to be very dark as if the sun never shined there. Today, the sun was out shining and bright. The barracks were in color. So far, all the camps have sea foam green somewhere in them. It is hard to see these places in the sun and bright and with color and to imagine people in color there.

We went to a palace yesterday, and the professors brought up an interesting point I had never thought before… these places were big on human rights violations. They had the workers making this place of opulence where they sat and watched people suffer. It was weird to be learning about the gilding, the portraits, the parties and the art styles when you sit and realize how much that cost, dollar amount and socially, the castle seems far less wonderful.

It has been very hard to be an American lately witnesses what we have been doing around the world but most especially in the Middle East. Going to these camps has been a reminder of a time when we were great. There are signs posted about the liberation of these camps by the United States and whenever I see one, I am a little proud inside. Frankly, I haven’t been proud to be an American in a long time, if ever. This has been nice. I know we did a lot of things that are not laudable at the same time, but this was one thing that we did that really makes me smile. However, reading Primo Levi’s book it has made me see liberation in a totally new light. He kept talking about the guilt about things that happened while in camps, and the sorrow because of the loss of family and possessions that they now had time to think about. I don’t know if it was the same at all camps, or if it was possibly different at Auschwitz because they were liberated by the Soviets. I am sure there was a moment for all prisoners remembered what they did and did not have waiting for them outside the walls. Family members, houses, businesses, and jobs: all were gone. Plus, in many cases, most of their city and neighbors were probably gone too.

One last thing that really got to me at Dachau was how organized the killing was. People went into a room where it was explained that they were going to “take a shower.” Next, they would go to the undressing room where they would get ready. The thick metal door somehow wasn’t a clue to them that the next room was where they were going to die. It was the gas chamber. Next was the cold room where corpses were piled up before they got to the next room, the crematorium. The person/body just went straight through the building. One thing you can say for the Nazis, they were efficient.

Things to remember: While trying local fare is a good idea, curry wurst is not, apple strudel works to get the taste out of your mouth after the curry wurst experiment, after I leave concentration camps I get a strong urge to take a shower so I basically bathe in hand sanitizer in the parking lot, travel with people you know really well before hand because sometimes you really want to talk about what you saw and sometimes talking to people you don’t know as well ends badly.

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Comments

[John Baumann]

Keep it up
Beth, you just keep on writing and we will keep on reading.