Dachau. Bergen-Belsen. Auschwitz. I didn’t want to visit ex-concentration camp sites while I was in Germany but it somehow seemed inevitable. I had been having a lot of flashback memories ever since I arrived in Germany. When I first visited Munich in 1977, I inexplicably knew the city although I had never been there.
So now, in 1988, where would I go to find a concentration camp? I was in the Frankfurt area, Griesheim, to be exact. Working for the Stars and Stripes newspaper. I decided to call the local library. I could not Google to find out the info at that time.
On the phone, a librarian told me there were no such thing as a “conzentrationlager.” “Nein, nein, nein,” she insisted.
I prayed for help internally and a male voice unexpectedly interrupted the conversation. He gave me a phone number and told me to call him in about 15 minutes. I was stunned and the phone went dead.
Curious about this turn of events, I made the phone call at the appointed time.
*Albert “just happened” to be passing by when he heard my conversation with the librarian. He was a Catholic man who had converted to Judaism and he was eager to assist me. A few days later, we met in Darmstadt, and he gave me a ticket to Dachau near Munich.
The day I traveled was dark and somber befitting my mood. The leftover snow looked as old and muddy as I felt.
Numerous busses, trains, and trams would take me from Darmstadt to Munich. I dreaded the trip.
Normally, in Germany when you are in public, everyone speaks German. But on this day, everyone near to me spoke English. Entering the last bus, EVERYONE was speaking English. When I chimed in, we all laughed. I found out that a group of New Zealand high school students were visiting Dachau and would take this journey with me.
As the bus stopped so did my heart. Exiting the vehicle slowly, I walked towards the gate. My feet felt like stone. Ahead, there was a building with a sign that said “Crematorium.”
Looking at the barbed wire surrounding the camp, my footsteps faltered. Seeing the sign, a deep sobbing from within me erupted. I could not stop crying.
Normally, I am a suspicious New Yorker so what happened next was inexplicable.
A stranger approached and put his arms around me. He held me tenderly as my sorrow ran its course.
“Who ARE you?” I asked rudely when I “came to.”
“Just someone who cares, ” he replied softly. This teacher was from New Zealand and offered me companionship for the day. I turned down his kind offer because I needed some alone time. To see the camp for myself. To spend time in prayer.
Still I was touched because I had assumed that the only other people who would be visiting Dachau would be Jewish folks from around the world. It never occurred to me that people from faraway places like New Zealand would want to visit Dachau.
While touring the camp all day, I kept asking God Why. Why did this happen? How could you do this? I felt angry, sad and many emotions. The photos of stereotypical Jews, the Kristallnacht, and the yellow arm bands Jewish people were made to wear by the Nazis.
Hitler portrayed the Jews as vermin, Different, animals who were not of pure blood (like the muggles portrayed in Harry Potter books by JK Rowling). Hitler depicted the Jewish people as inferior and parasites of the German Aryan race who needed to be eradicated. His hatred and anti-semitism grew amongst people in Germany, Austria and Hungary due to these myths, stereotypes and lies just as they are currently being spread around the world by corrupt authoritarian leaders who are expousing hatred and blaming people for wrongs not their fault.
More about Hitler from the Anne Frank House
What sense did it all make? I wanted answers. I wanted peace and understanding.
Hours later, back at the front gate, I met the high school girls from New Zealand. They were crying and put their arms around me and apologized to me for what happened during the Holocaust. These sweet innocent girls apologized to Me.
At that moment, I realized that this was why I went on this journey. To put to rest the doubts, fears and terrors of the Holocaust. To forgive the Germans and the Nazis for the wrongdoing so that I could still believe and have faith in God. So that in my world all could be as Anne Frank wrote… after all that she had been through, she still believed in the basic goodness and kindness of human beings.
I had grown up angry and afraid of the Germans in New York. My family and many Jewish people I knew hated the Germans. They would not buy German cars nor associate with Germans in any way. The Germans were the enemy. But now, I could finally let go of the deeply held hatred in my heart that I had been there for so long. Bitter hatred I did not even know I had dissipated. And I felt FREE.
PS: The first prisoners in Dachau were political, they were simply those who opposed the Nazi regime. Some were Socialists. Later, other groups were also interned at Dachau, including homosexuals, gypsies, and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
There were 8 million people besides the Jewish people who were killed during the Holocaust (Shoah). An excellent 10 hour documentary film directed by Claude Lanzmann tells the story through interviews with people who worked for the death trains, survivors, witnesses and perpetrators during visits to German Holocaust sites across Poland, including extermination camps. When I was in Frankfurt in 1988, a group of us saw about 3 hours of the film.
Another excellent film tells about the escape of the prisoners from one of the concentration camps, Escape from Sorbibor
Of course, there is also the iconic Schindler’s List by Steven Spielberg
Other places to visit include Anne Frank House and read the diary of a young Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis in a Secret Annex Anne Frank’s diary or see the movie or play.
*A word about my friend Albert who helped me go to Dachau. I found out later that he was a German Catholic but had recently converted to Judaism. As a young boy, at the end of World War II, Hitler was so desperate for soldiers, he recruited young children. Albert was one of them and he was so traumatized and felt so guilty about killing people during the war, he became Jewish to assuage this guilt.
The Holocaust Journey
A small group of Jewish and German people from OIM intercessory prayer ministry visited all of the ex-concentration camp sites in the late 1980’s for prayer and healing. Here is a few words from one of the participants.
I found out later (in the 1990’s) about my former life working for the French Underground Resistance. I was 15 years young and engaged to be married.
From Ashes to Healing: Mystical Encounters with the Holocaust by Rabbi Yonasson Gershom
