To Go Or Not To Go?
GERMANY | Sunday, 26 July 2009 | Views [551]
Leaving Salzburg and heading to Munich, I am already contemplating whether or not I should spend a day visiting Dachau - the “model” for all other concentration camps. It feels a bit strange, one day being in the picturesque, innocent land of The Sound Of Music - all beautiful green rolling hills, dances around fountains, songs about drops of golden sun and drinks with jam and bread, and kids running about in curtain-made lederhosen - the next, in a place of such unimaginable terror and horror. When recalling The Sound Of Music, everyone immediately conjures the former images - no one wants to remember Rolf and his new found murderous ideology. I guess its human nature, how we stay sane and productive - remember the good, repress the bad.
The debate in my head follows along these lines:
1. I just don’t think I can handle it. The feeling of despair and utter abhorrence after visiting places like Nanjing, Hiroshima, Saigon (see previous post), and S21 in Cambodia wells up in me again at the very thought of being on the site of a place so evil. I start to imagine the kind of stories and images that I will be seeing there - the kind that you think no one should ever have to see let alone happen to those IN the images. In essence, I just don’t WANT to witness these things. I do not want to put myself in the position of feeling so distraught that I am physically ill.
2. If I go I will be some perverse ‘horror tourist’ desecrating the place where so many went through so much by parading around those very spots of unspeakable acts, flouting my freedom; running around with my audio guide in order not to miss any of the ‘sights’ and taking snaps at all the ‘highlights’. Stumbling across a pretty terrible fist fight in a Vienna train station between two tough looking guys, I was amazed to see how everyone just stopped where they were, turned and watched these men pummel each other - in actual fact, one guy was on the ground being pummelled. No one attempted to intervene. I’m not sure anyone even went for help. It was as if it was some kind of entertainment - gladiators fighting to the death. I do not want to be a gruesome death voyeur.
3. I don’t want to witness other people BEING horror tourists, which inevitably there always are. The teenagers mucking around being loud and obnoxious at Nanjing; the guys standing in front of the site where the A-bomb landed in Hiroshima, posing for a photo with cheesy grins and thumbs-up; the people laughing in the corridors of S21.
4. When it comes down to it, I do not want to acknowledge the depths of evil in humanity. Given the choice of witnessing violence and terror, or covering my eyes and ears shouting ‘la la la’ in order to stop it infiltrating my world, I will choose the latter. As long as I don’t see it, or hear it, it doesn’t happen. It doesn’t exist. Life is all smiles and sunshine. I can’t even stand to watch five seconds of boxing on tv. The channel is quickly changed, along with the images. Repress and forget.
BUT
1. Isn’t it plainly disrespectful to ignore the existence of such a place? Especially when you don’t want to expose yourself to getting ‘upset’ when the victims there had NO CHOICE, and went through so much more physical and mental pain than can ever be imagined by myself.
2. If I don’t go am I pretending that it all never happened? Isn’t it hypocritical to tour Munich and look at the facades of buildings that were important Nazi sites because there’s not as much emotion in staring at a wall that is now an office block, all the while never acknowledging probably the most important site around Munich for those who were subjected to the outcomes of decisions made in those very buildings.
3. Does forgetting and ignoring make you complicit in allowing these things to slip under the radar, helping society to pretend there are really not those capable of such things among us? Therefore allowing them to reappear in the future?
4. Finally, surely the least the victims deserve is to be paid remembrance. Dachau is not just a museum, it is now a memorial site, with churches and monuments where visitors can pay their respects to those held and died there. I learned that after the war, the camp was used as a settlement area and had changed significantly. The surviving victims were the ones who pushed for the camp to be restored to its initial appearance, and some survivors even acted as ‘tour guides’ around the area itself.
Trying to resolve these conflicts in my head, I think this last point really helps me feel that it is ok to go. There are some pretty horrific exhibits relating to treatment of those at the camp. I can’t forget the images of those beaten to death; those being used as guinea pigs in medical experiments; and those skeletal piles of corpses. I can’t forget the horrific facts that the camp had a brothel in order to create more productive ’workers’ - women from other concentration camps were forced to be prostitutes here; prisoners caps would be thrown outside the camp boundaries - if they didn’t retrieve it they would be beaten as punishment for not having full uniform, if they did they knew they would be shot for trying to ‘escape’. Also the surprising facts that companies like BMW had contracts for the use of the slave labour of those incarcerated; the insanely meticulous and detailed specifications to which beds had to be made - a certain thickness of the folded sheet, the slope of the blanket over the pillows had to be at a certain degree and line up for all the beds in one row.
Whilst there I find it creepy to walk through the gate declaring “Freedom through work” and stand in the roll call area surrounded by watch towers. And yes there are groups of people laughing, being loud, mucking around and being disrespectful; yes, there are people standing in front of the gate smiling with cheesy poses which seems totally inappropriate; yes, it is upsetting and hard to read some of the info. But in the end I think I made the right decision. Because all this needs to happen ‘NEVER AGAIN‘.
