The Nazis Are Coming

          Just like Michael Jordan, Johnny Cash, and Jesus, the Nazis are making a comeback. How do I know? Well, for one, I went to Munich, Germany this past weekend. It was a lot of fun, don't get me wrong, but I still felt a distinctive Gestapo presence. They were everywhere- on trams, in beer halls, and in the city center. And, to make themselves harder to identify, they even dressed in normal, everyday clothes. To the untrained eye, they might have seemed like plain old Germans. There wasn't any of the saluting or yelling or marching that Americans have come to associate with the Nazi party, either. Instead, this comeback appears to be taking place secretly, a kind of underground uprising. But, of course, I was able to see through their act. I wasn't fooled.

          OK, so that last paragraph might have been an exaggeration. I don't really have a whole lot of evidence that Nazism is making its return to Germany. That didn't stop me from imagining it, though. I couldn't help it- this was my first time in Germany, and at the beginning it was all I could think about. I'd get on the metro and see someone and wonder if they had Nazi sympathies. Or at least if they had ancestors involved in World War II. I figured that was a pretty good bet. And, oh look, that guy has a shaved head! NEO-NAZI!!

          Anyway, eventually my friends and I (there were four of us) got tired of waiting for the SS to show up, so we went out to track them down on our own. We decided a great place to start would be Dachau, which was used as a concentration camp in WWII. So, on a cold, gloomy Saturday morning, we took the bus out there. About thirty people were on the bus with us. When we arrived, we saw about fifty more at the entrance. If this was any indication, it seemed like it would be pretty crowded in there. It was hard to tell, though. We split up from the rest of the group and went inside.

          Once we entered the camp, we found a barren, desolate, huge plot of land. Nobody else was around. The grounds were mostly empty space in the middle, where the dozens of barracks had been. There were walkways around the edges, and one main walkway down the middle of the street. The middle path held special importance during prisoner's internments, as it was a gathering point and the main area of liveliness in an otherwise torturous place. Also, there was way more room out in the street than in the barracks, which had been built for two hundred people, but at times housed over two thousand.

Middle Street

Bodies were cremated in these.  Yikes.

Where one of the barracks used to be.

Little kid, all alone :(

          Let me tell you, it was just about the perfect day to go to a concentration camp. The gray skies and drizzling rain provided great atmosphere. We only saw a few other people as we walked around, which contributed to what my friend described as a, “feeling of death in the air.” I had to agree with him- there was a relentless emptiness surrounding the camp. It definitely wasn't the same bustling center of commerce from sixty-some odd years ago!

          All joking aside for a minute, this was an incredibly depressing place to visit. It hits home when you actually see the crematoriums and walk through the rooms used as gas chambers. And after we had walked around the camp for a couple hours (we only made it through a small part, too), we went into the museum. I could've stayed in there for hours. They had hundreds of eight-foot tall displays filled with the stories of people who'd been in the camps. While it can be hard to comprehend a piece of marble that says, “Grave of Thousands Unknown,” these stories were personal and moving. So much death and destruction, and so many horrible experiences. And yet, the museum was able to highlight at least some positive stories, about people who had lived here and heroes who had helped fight against the regime. There was one about seven mothers who all had babies during their time in Dachau. Even though the Nazis had taken to killing all pregnant women (and all newborns), these women had somehow survived. And since the American liberation happened soon after the birth of their children, each of the babies lived, too. The American soldier who found them was overwhelmed by the sight of the mothers and their newborns. After having seen piles of dead, mutilated bodies, there was this small, good thing. He burst into tears on the spot.

          We headed out of the museum and toward the exit of the camp. It had been a long day already, and it was only about 2 P.M. I kind of wanted to get a souvenir from there, but I wasn't sure if there was a shop. I was thinking something like a, “I SURVIVED DACHAU!” t-shirt would be nice (Yeah, I know I'm going to hell for that one). When we got to the end, we did find a small souvenir shop. Sadly, pretty much the only thing they were selling was postcards. I thought about getting one, but decided against it. I mean, sending one of those just would have been morbid, right?