I have been to many different places in my life. I have been to 32 different states and 18 different countries in my 19 years of being alive. I have seen a lot of different things, experienced a ton of different cultures, and have made memories that will be with me forever. There have been many influential moments, but the most moving moment of my travel experience happened this past summer at Dachau Concentration Camp outside Munich, Germany.
The train ride from Munich to Dachau was about a 20-minute ride through the city and then through the countryside. When you get off the train in Dachau, the town looks like a typical suburb. It was a sunny Monday morning; locals were commuting to work and doing their daily activities. We got off the train and waited for the bus to take us to the Dachau Memorial site. After a 15-minute bus ride through neighborhoods and local hangouts, we arrived at the visitor center. When you get off at the visitor center, you get a very peaceful feeling. There are large hedges and gardens in the area around it, but once you continue on down the road, you will leave that feeling behind.
As I think back to what I felt when I saw the gates, I cannot find a word for it. It was a mixture of shock, sorrow, hatred, and disappointment. Shocked at the fact that all of this happened less than three miles from the city center. Sorrow for those who had to endure all of this pain. Hatred for those who started all of this. Disappointment in my fellow humans for not standing up to these actions. Some did stand up to these actions and some were killed in the end because of it, but as a whole, we, as a human race, allowed this to go on for too long.
As you continue on through the camp, you get to witness the living conditions of these people, listen to the horrific first accounts of what happened in this camp, and see photographs from these horrible times. You will hear facts regarding the people who were in the camp, but the number that has stuck with me is 206,206.
There were 206,206 people brought through that camp, and those are only the ones who were reported.
We as humans allowed 206,206 to go through this SINGLE camp.
I am writing this article to tell more people about what it is actually like to see a concentration camp. We need awareness of what truly happened in these camps. We are taught a lot of things, but no classroom can really describe what it was like to witness that in person.
If you are ever given the opportunity to see a concentration camp I highly recommend you go and see it. It has easily been one of the most impacting things I have ever seen. When you leave, you will be a different person than when you walked in those gates, but I think that is important for people. You will be given a new drive to realize that we can never let this happen again.
You will realize that even though it's not going on in your own backyard, it doesn't make it not important. Most importantly, you will realize that as a country we must unite if anything like this ever happens anywhere again because it is our job to stand up for brothers and sisters in foreign nations. In difficult times, we must come together not as separate nations, but as one world.
