Day 4 - Dachau

Our bus to Dachau left at 9 AM this morning. I was scared all night last night about if I could handle it emotionally. I shared that sentiment with many others that I talked to. This whole week has been, yes, amazing and life changing, but also emotionally draining. I haven’t gotten much sleep, I haven’t had much alone time or play my guitar-therapy time, and it’s showing in me being on the verge of tears throughout certain events during the day.

So we were off to Dachau. We all got individual audio guides so we could be independent of tour guides and also explore individually and privately if we chose to do so. I walked around alone. I listened to a few recordings but soon abandoned the guide and the map. I found the cloister attached to the site. It reminded me of my Mom and how she always wanted to be a nun. How she was a saint in so many ways, how she had lived through World War II and had been lifted up as a five-year-old to hand Hitler, who was passing through her town on a wagon, some flowers.

I missed her, and I thought about her for a while. I grew up with the Holocaust reminders all around me. I watched the documentaries growing up, I’ve seen all the pictures, and besides feeling melancholy about my Mom, I really wasn’t quite moved by anything I saw. Well, I was moved, but not in a new groundbreaking way that made me cry or feel desperate.

I’ve also done so much research about genocide and read and learned about other instances of incredible cruelty, so in a weird way going to Dachau seemed like nothing much more than repeating old history to me.

We got back on the bus. I talked about other things, not Dachau. The girls next to me talked about other things, not Dachau. It was odd, to say the least. We got back in time for dinner. After dinner I played with Marlene and Ella, two little girls who were carefree and took my mind real far away for the time I spent with them.

Then, we had the fireside talk. It was unstructured, and people were invited to share comments or ask questions. The emotions began, and I realized that I began to be affected. I even felt like crying at one point. I meant to say something, but since I don’t have the guts to keep my hand up sometimes I gave up after a few failed attempts. I did start to notice that what I had anticipated to feel at the camp I began to feel now.

The talk ended with Phil reading from his notebook, reading a story about his family’s personal part in what we had learned about that day. There was lots of sniffing, and when the talk was officially finished, many people stayed in place crying, many people’s faces were buried in other people’s arms. I figured I’ll stay and give out a few hugs, but I felt too emotional, and I figured I’ll go to my room and write my thoughts down, just like Phil had done earlier today.

I did learn something after all.

Growing up in Germany I knew about the Holocaust. I even remember at one point thinking about how what if somehow the Holocaust had been forgotten or wiped from History through some freak event and one day information emerged about what happened, like papers of some sort. We would be so shocked. So shocked. I thought about that reaction verses the reaction we have on an every-day basis knowing our past, and growing up with this knowledge, thus never really learning it without knowing it beforehand. I think this was around the time when I started promising myself that I wouldn’t be immune to the daily news, that I wouldn’t sit by and eat my TV dinner while people were reported shot or killed on TV. I would act. I would do something about it. My activism was born.

Growing up in Germany, I never heard anyone say, “I am proud to be a German!” Certainly if anyone did, she’d be called a Nazi or looked upon in a suspicious way. Moving to the States at 17 and being exposed to the hardcore patriotism of rural North Dakota with the National Hymn and hand-on-the-heart standing ovations to the flag, I didn’t quite know where to place that feeling of confusion.

I realize now that I grew up with guilt about the Holocaust, guilt about being part of a country that has such a horrible history. I remember meeting the first Jewish person ever after moving to NYC in 1999, and feeling guilt and having to consciously get over that. I remember meeting black people and in a weird way feeling guilty to be white and wishing I was black. I had grown up knowing about my country’s history, but at the same time not really being patriotic. We never talked about how our country was great, we really rather talked about issues in a global context. This may sound cool, but at the same time I was less aware that the rest of the world wasn’t like Germany. I remember the first moment when I realized that the way I was living was actually the minority of how people lived. The large other part of the world’s population lived in much less convenient conditions than the ones I knew all my life and had taken for granted.

I got married to Ken who is American. 9/11 happened. I read 1984. I learned more about American patriotism and the "God Bless America" theme. After initially wanting to move to the states to be a cool hip American teenager I began to realize how shallow my ambitions were and that there wasn’t anything substantial behind them. I started to gain a picture of Germany that I hadn’t had before since I hadn’t been able to step back and see things from a distance. I began to see America very critically. For slavery, for all its acts of terrorism in the past, for its hypocrisy and inaction.

I have to word this carefully and I don’t want to offend anyone and please hear me out, this is all said with a deep love for humanity and to figure myself out. Being German and naturally being more critical of things especially my own government, it was more OK to me to be critical. Ken doesn’t quite like me bashing the U.S. sometimes, but I realize now more than ever that perhaps part of this criticism is a fear to repeat history, and a fear of other people not seeing what’s right before their eyes.

Not until I read 1984 did certain things in every day life make sense to me. They only made sense because I read the book. I could have never predicted that before. I was sick of the post 9/11 world of flags and God Bless America. Why not God Bless the World if you have to even use God, why not just Let’s do what we can ourselves to make this globe a better living environment for everyone. What do we have to be so proud of? Do we continually celebrate our accomplishments or do we spend more time and effort on the things we need to work on in order to be better, in order to stay positive and to look forward?

Patriotism still has a bad connotation to me. Some philosopher once said something like if there was no patriotism there would be no more war. That made me think. Maybe being proud of my country isn’t enough. Maybe I need to be proud of my world. And if my country does something to be ashamed of, I should be ashamed of it. But maybe that isn’t enough. Maybe if my world does something to be ashamed of, I should be ashamed of my world. I am, after all, a global citizen, I share responsibility. The people in Darfur are as much my fellow humans as my next door neighbors are, as my family in Germany is. Maybe if we all start feeling a little more like that there is a better chance of preventing another genocide.
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07/18/07: I am finally adding Phill's story (with his permission of course).

My mother was born in Mannheim, Germany. I’m not sure exactly how far that is, but it’s a lot closer to Dauchau than New York. That is where her mother and father were born. It is where their mothers and fathers were born too. I’m told my Great Grandfather, Philipp, worked for the German railroad as a train conductor. It was his job in the rail yard to make sure the right locomotives were on the right tracks attached to the right cars and headed in the right direction. It was a modest job that afforded him the ability to keep his family’s bellies full and a warm bed to sleep. With war on the horizon that was a luxury for most. He thought it quite odd the number of empty cattle cars being shifted about, but again war was coming and it was not his place to ask questions.

Time had passed and the cattle cars came back full, filled to the brim. They were not loaded like cattle and they were not packed in like sardines. They were not animals though they were people. Human beings treated with a level of disdain and disregard people reserve only for other people. Not even dogs are made to suffer like this. After all, the Nazis made sure to feed the dogs.

For a time, my Great Grandfather was able to resist acknowledging what was happening. All he saw were the hands. Only hands are not people. Only hands cannot look you in the eye. My Great Grandfather had his family to feed and now war was no longer just on the horizon.

In this time, my Great Grandfather’s son, my Grandfather, also named Philipp would take lunch to his father. Walking through the train yard, he too passed the hands. At fourteen years old and with a rebellious streak as long as the cars of hands, he had not yet learned not to ask too many questions. “Who are you? Why are you here?” were met with pleads and cries for help. “Move along or you will be shot,” shouted the guards any time he would linger too long. Soon, my Great Grandfather gave up eating lunch. He and his son agreed the hands needed it more. Each day would be thousands of more hands and each day my grandfather would bring a few of them his half loaf of bread and cup of water.

As my mother tells me this story she adds how ashamed my family was that this was all they could do. As more and more full cars came and more and more cars returned empty, my family’s shame grew as well. After all, what could half a loaf of bread and cup of water do for so many suffering thousands? I know what it did. It brought someone hope. Each day, one more person knew they would not die of starvation or thirst just yet. The rest of the world has not given up. Not all is lost, yet.

Soon thereafter the whispered questions reached my Great Grandfather’s bosses. Because of his skills as a conductor he was not expendable, but he was not above being punished. He was sent to the Russian front. He was lucky to return home alive after the end of the war.

At the same time, the German Army came to take my Grandfather to fight. He refused. “Fine,” they told him. They would take his little brother instead. Only then did he agree to go. He fought in the panzer division at the Battle of the Bulge. He was captured and held as a prisoner of war. His little brother, only 12, was drafted to fight. My mother stops telling the story for a moment, then he is not mentioned again.

This is the story of my family as it has been passed down to me. This is the story that passes through my head as I walk to Barrack X. I approach the entrance in a strange mixture of calmness and curiosity. Each step requires more and more effort and becomes more and more difficult. It was the showers. My panicked legs carry me outside before I could tell them to run. I’m thankful I don’t choke on the lump in my throat and I’m still able to breathe. I make my way to the back of the barrack and take heavy labored steps in the direction of the small path through the trees, desperate for any kind of shelter from everything.

Here I found the killing grounds, the blood trench and the tiny square of earth where thousands of undocumented people’s ashes were laid to rest. These might be the hands. This is where they most likely met their end. Could it be that one of the hands that took the half loaf of bread are here? Is there a chance these nameless hands sent to nameless graves were touched by my family generations ago? There is no way to know for sure. In the bus ride back I have started to come to peace with this.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to be here, to have seen what I have seen, and to share what I have shared. I struggled the entire time I was here with wanting to take something with me. A rock, stick, blade of grass, a picture, postcard or a souvenir… something. But then I realized I don’t need to. I have this story, my story. That’s not something I can pick up off the ground or buy in a shop. I have learned the truth about my family history that I did not have before today. That is something I will never loose like a rock or stick. It will not die like a blade of grass. It’s so much more personal than a souvenir. This is my story to tell. This is my story to pass on.

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Also, if you'd like to read my graduation speech which was inspired by the Salzburg Seminar, and particularly this day, read it here.