2013 November 25 « HughHarris

Dachau-a visit to horror past. Moving experience & prompting questions.

We visited the Dachau Concentration Camp today. A short train ride from Munich took us to this small village that has suffered the charge of having the same name from where the Nazi Party opened the first prison where convicted inmates were housed after the passage of the Nuremberg Laws which institutionalized racial discrimination.

Opened in 1933 the number of prisoners who went through the camp and died there are still not fully known but there were over 13,000 held there at one time by 1940. The camp records reflect that 205,206 prisoners were received and 31,951 died there. But these are just what was recorded. Many more were suspected of having their fate determined there but not recorded. It was the first and primary training facility for all other Nazi concentration camps.

Surprisingly there are worship facilities built in the camp now for both Catholic and Protestant faiths as well as a Jewish memorial.

Visiting the crematorium and seeing the gas chambers disguised as showers only raised the questions more succinctly – could this ever happen again, is it happening now and not unlike the villagers of Dachau could we be looking the other way as the stoves of Dachau burn night and day?

“Never again” is the pledge written on the camp walls. Only the suffering of the Christ can fully explain and comfort what was lost in this place. Only His sacrifice can cover these sins. I will never understand it fully but there seems to be a peace now even in the midst of a history of horror. On the occasion of the camp being liberated it was near the Orthodox Easter and many priest and clergy imprisoned there held an Easter service to end all services. “In the beginning was the Word…” The priests recited the entire Book of John from memory to begin the service. What a day it must have been. Freedom from tyranny. Freedom in Christ.