Walking in the steps…

Day: 8

Countries: 3               Cities: 4

Munich, Germany

Walking in the steps…

Sunday 27 December 2015

I can't seem to keep the days of the week straight. It doesn't feel like a Sunday. But it is and now we are officially past the one week mark of our trip. And in our last full day in Munich. Tomorrow we head to Nuremberg.

Today we woke up and got going around 830. Leftover fruit from yesterday for breakfast as we headed to the train station. We figured out which track to take to get to Dachau fairly easily and then made the transfer to bus 726 once there. It's a cute little town. But awful to think of the atrocities that happened there. And not really all that long ago.

The concentration camp memorial was… It's hard to put into words. A quiet that was eerie. A chill that seemed to go beyond what the thermometer said. An attempt to reconcile what had happened there and work toward peace. But an awful reminder.

And although this was like the first such camp and one that lasted all 12 years of the Nazi reign of terror, and it was the basis for subsequent camps, it's still not even the worst of them. But it's still awful.

200,000 prisoners. At least 43,000 died there. Jews, enemies of the state, anti-Nazis,  homesexuals, emigrants....anyone they didn't like.

And the other half of it was a training center for SS troops. So the worst of men, the most terrible of people, went through that place and learned how to be even more terrible, including the guy who would become the main commandant of Auschwitz.

We walked through the gate, saw the barracks, the crematorium. We walked through the museum and could only read some of the info because it was just so awful. But never again. Never again. Please Lord never again. It's hard to want to go back to another place like that. After how awful this one is and knowing it's not the worst. And I feel bad. Because I'm so far removed from the awful reality of it and I can't handle it. But people lived and died through it as their reality. How could this be real? But then again, how can some people deny it happened? And it's happening again in other forms in other parts of the world. but how do we stop it......

Walking in the steps of history…

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