These are some of the impressions from our very recent trip to the Dachau concentration camp memorial near Munich. Somehow we chose the coldest, bleakest day to visit the most depressing place in our vicinity. We were told that some people actually do come on these days purposely so they would not get into a pick-nick type mood. Not us, it just turned out that way.
Personal comments will be left out for the most part, as I am no expert in the history of the Holocaust, of the Nazi party and Third Reich dictatorship. This visit was a means to get a feel for the place, where it is alleged that tens of thousands of people were kept as work slaves, prisoners and many murdered.
There is nothing to say that can excuse the incarceration of innocent people in these camps or anywhere else on earth for that matter. War times are not the times any sane person would want to live in, if you can call it living.
This is in no way aimed to minimize the personal tragedies of people and families affected by WWII. Although, there are perspectives to consider whenever we look at events of history as they are told to us. If we have not lived it ourselves, the only thing we can do is let our present knowledge and intuition guide us to the truth.
Some might argue that it has nothing to do with this, but I am nevertheless reminded of a book I read, where a woman is describing her young life in post war Korea. Her father was an American soldier, and her mother a young poor Korean woman. Her mother, pressured by her family, abandoned her at the age of four. The book tells of the atrocities her own people were capable of doing to her as a four year old and other children of American soldiers and orphans of war. Reading personal accounts like this may give one a completely new perspective on historical events, as history is usually written by the winners of wars. In the end, we each have make up our own mind about the past and present news which is presented to us. If we use our experiences and intrinsic intuition, we will get the perspective most close to the truth, even if we will never really know what exactly happened. We certainly shouldn’t be ostracized or even jailed because of our opinions or questions on historical events.
Further information on the memorials at Dachau can be found here: https://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/MemorialSite/index.html