Authored by Peter van Buren via The American Conservative,
You won’t find any shallow hashtags at the former concentration camp, just quiet, powerful reality…
Right now, someone in the media is finding another excuse to proclaim that Trump is Hitler, America is Germany 1933, and detention centers on the southern border are concentration camps.
Recently I went to Dachau, just outside of Munich, to see a real concentration camp.
The first thing you notice is the irony. The people who, in too loud voices, mill around the station entrance asking “Is this the train to Dachau?” and then the conductor’s announcement calling out the name as if it were just another stop. The mediocre station has a McDonald’s. The bus stop sign for the shuttle you need to take has “Concentration Camp” written in English. Everyone around you is on vacation, dressed for it and chattering like it. You arrive at a visitor’s center, and there’s a rush for the toilets and the snack bar. Which way to the camp, Dad? Can we see the crematorium? Can we?
A hundred steps outside the snack bar, the world changes. The road turns gray even though the light playing through the poplars is out of a postcard. They’ve changed the entrance location from a few years ago so that you now enter through the former SS barracks and come to the gate. It really says Arbeit Macht Frei (“Work Will Set You Free”) on the iron bars and you walk through just like they did. The gate only swings one way; you will leave today, but it wasn’t originally designed that way and you can tell. There may be a hundred people with you but it is completely silent as you enter.
It is too small. You see the administrative buildings to the right, the reconstructed prisoner barracks to the left, the assembly ground in front of you. You see the fences and walls on all four sides, walkable in a few minutes at an easy pace on a gorgeous day. It is too small to have held all those people, too small for all that happened, too small to be the symbol of Nazi power it was then. You expect something more substantial, with the distant site lines obscured, like at Disney World, where tricks of the eye make things seem grander.
It is too familiar. It takes only a few minutes to get your bearings. You’ve seen photos before, and there are many posted, populating the place with buildings and people once here and forever gone. It is unlike, say, an art museum on the scale of the Met or the Uffizi, where, after hours of circling corridors, you have no idea where you’ve been. You know Dachau.
The museum unfolds in the order that new prisoners were processed. The early days of National Socialism are explained where the inmates were once assigned numbers. The seizure of power by Hitler is documented in the room where people were stripped and deloused (subtlety is missing when the backdrop is Nazism). And you exit into the campgrounds awkwardly after reading about their liberation by the 45th Infantry Division.
You think, after all that reading and those museum exhibits (and it is a thorough education, much more than an Instagram collection of artifacts and, oh look, a real prisoner’s uniform, honey!), you understand something. But not yet. You have really just arrived, and in front of you is Dachau itself, the ground, the air—the same ground they saw and air they breathed—and you have a choice. Many visitors turn back towards the snack bar, falsely satiated after an hour, thinking they’ve seen Dachau and anxiously trying to remember when the shuttle bus runs back to the station.
If you wait for them to leave, you can see Dachau.
Most of the place is empty, acres of crushed stone with flat markers showing where the now-missing barracks were. The trees lining the central road bisecting the camp are old. They were here when Dachau was working. You can match up an individual tree from a 1942 photo with the one in front of you and touch it. The sun is warm; it’s a beautiful late summer afternoon with those wonderful tickles of early fall all around. A day to be alive, grandpa would have called it. There must have been days just like this one in 1942.
There is some minor archaeological excavation work going on. An archaeologist stands over a hole about three feet deep and explains that he’s looking for evidence of the original fence line, the border of the camp before it was expanded in 1937. He’s found some wooden post fragments and some barbed wire. So the bottom of that hole is 1937, I ask? Yes, he says, the dirt and stones piled here haven’t seen sunlight since then. I ask if I can take one of the stones with me as a keepsake, and he explains that is not allowed, even as he looks away just long enough. Doing the right thing is hard enough elsewhere, never mind in Dachau.
A sign states simply that the area in front of you is where the barracks used for medical experiments on live humans once stood. Another denotes the punishment barracks, where the SS concocted even darker methods of retribution. You see where the bodies were stacked like cordwood but you know that wood is strong and straight and the images you are recreating show corpses floppy and tangled in their piles. Now you are seeing Dachau, here in the deeper waters.
Dachau does not believe in your tears. This is not a sentimental place. It is not clean. A universe of victims died here but there is no acknowledgement of victimhood, or raising of awareness, or giving of voice, or trafficking in of shallow hashtags. Dachau is here to declare what happened and charge you with doing something on the scale and with the accuracy that are required.
See, by coming here, it is now handed to you, that obligation. Hitler and his Dachau did not emerge from an election that frowned on a favored candidate. Following World War I, Germany was purposefully humiliated and saddled with war reparations that were not payable. An economic crisis unrolled. Inflation drove the nation to starvation. With no history of democracy, Germany was willed into a republic as unprepared as two virgins in an arranged marriage. Both across the border and at home, powerful communist forces threatened. Hungry people weren’t tricked into a strongman because of Facebook or some Electoral College fluke; they demanded one.
Within three months of taking office, Hitler gave himself the right to amend the constitution, ended representative government, created special political courts, made criticism of the government a capital crime, and established Dachau. Two months after that, Jews were fired from government positions, political parties and unions were prohibited, opponents were murdered, and books were burned. There was no slippery slope. It was not incremental; it was inevitable.
There is obviously more to this story than a travelogue about an interesting day trip out to Dachau by train from nearby Munich. To say that Trump is Hitler, America is Germany in 1933, and a grimy detention facility is a concentration camp means you have never been to Dachau.
The presentation at Dachau is very un-2019, where everyone vies for adopted victimhood and chosen trauma. Dachau is cold because only its facts matter.
Tweets childishly mocking political opponents and regulations preventing a small number of self-declared trans people from joining the Army have nothing to do with Dachau. To cite 2019 border facilities or exaggerate the historical impact of a march in Charlottesville is to turn Dachau relative, the dial jiggered to magnify some other event. It makes people numb; it dumbs down discussion; it is cheap, inaccurate, and exploitative. It demands mighty outrage from a partial set of facts. Both butterflies and elephants have legs, but no one should claim a butterfly is an elephant.
Propagandists have always used ignorance to manipulate. Yet while CNN works to convince viewers that silver mylar blankets instead of comfy quilts for migrants means there are concentration camps in America, Dachau reminds us that physicians here dissected human beings alive as part of medical experiments. Just as is taught in beginning writing courses, truth comes from showing, not just telling. For those who call Trump a Nazi, there is Dachau to visit. For the record.
via zerohedge
I’ve been to Dachau twice, and the impact of that place never goes away. We should NEVER FORGET what Hitler did to the Jewish people and others he felt were unworthy of living.
@Why are you jerks whining about the nazis? They have been gone over 70 years. What about Antifa and black lives matter? are you too cowardly to criticize those thugs? You creeps make me sick harping on Nazis all the time like Nero playing the fiddle while Rome (USA) burns! Read a book about history if you can find one that is not full of commie lies!
I have also been there. It is a sad but amazing place to visit. I actually got to talk to a gentleman that was a prisoner there and it was very interesting to hear what he had to say.
I have been there and walking up to the gate you can feel the sadness. Walking through the grounds and the ovens was something I will never forget.
Give Trump another 4 years and see what happens. He is just warming up. He wants to make America pure white, and he despises and looks down blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, gays, and women, and has all his life. Patriotic and Christian Americans need to get this racist imbecile out of the White House before he can do any more damage to our country .
President Trump is not behaving presidentially for fact however the minorities are not negatively impacted by his policies. The racist and fascist attitudes are from the left and far right of the political spectrum. As examples of this look at AntiFa, KKK, Democrat policies, the long ago collective of laws known as Jim Crow - Democrat based and slavery which was repealed by conservatives under a racist and loved President, Abraham Lincoln, for starters. Conservatives are also minorities who are hated be the racists and fascists since these people factually show the lies of the fascist Democrat. Party and other fascists across the political spectrum.
You cannot be this stupid, brain dead and insane to make such a comment. Yes, he wants people to come To America LEGALLY like my parents and family did. Yes, he wants all people of every race, creed and color to obey our Laws. He wants opportunity for all Americans to grow and develop. This does not make him a racist or want wants just a white nation. It is amazing how stupid people are they don’t see how close the Progressive Socialist Communist Fascist Racist Democrat Party is to the Nazi Party. They are using the exact method of Hitler to conquer a country. First, most importantly get control of the education system. This was done by the Carter with the Department of Indoctrination Education. 2nd, disarm the people. Promote and encourage gun violence by using the entertainment industry. When gun violence is done people will demand gun control. Remove God from education and society. Make citizens depend only on the government for everything. Let them do whatever they want otherwise. Drugs, Alcohol any type of sex just so long as the government is in control. Remove all consequences and accountability as a result of their actions. Once full power is gain then you can take away the little freedom they have left.
I am a Trump supporter. Look at the democratic swine people like you support. For your info, Trump is supported by the white majority. That’s who you minority parasite serfs (e.g. people who gladly pay high taxes to support blacks, leftists, moslems and illegal immigrants) This country is divided and you would be surprised about how many of us want Civil War II (but only because you are ignorant and hate criminals). You fools think we want to live with you much longer? Even a minute longer? We hate the sewers you creep along and you too! Just because few of us say anything you think that we have submitted? If you call that thinking.
Elect a Democrat for President and see what you get! The only hatred he has is for terrorist muslims, as we all do..you idiots are going to regret every vote you give these socialists. Dachau will look like a 5 STAR HOTEL..be careful what you wish for!
Williamson…………. you are an absolute IGNORANT MORON…..just plain pathetic!!!
Get a life or move please.
Wake up and smell the coffee! You evidently or conveniently forget to read or view the unbiased news about Trump. At least this president is trying to raise our economy as well as protect our nation. Maybe you support open borders…..Then you in my eyes are a traitor to this country. Incidentally, Show me a country without borders.
You should examine very carefully where you get your information about Trump’s presidency and examine FACTS not HYPERBOLE !!
AND YOU ARE ANOTHER STUPID LIBERAL IDIOT..
I so agree with you!
Paul W. Who in the world plugged a propaganda jack into your brain and feed it with the most
Outrageous information of total lies! Anyone who is close to him knows he is for all races but
You are not close to him and whoever filled your head with what you are saying is someone
That needs counseling ASAP! Suggestion, stop listening to those lying convincers, do your own homework and reality will replace that deceitful program in your brain!🧐🤔
Good word freedom 1
I agree with you Paul Williamson. He is one of the worst presidents that we have had. All trump does is tell lie after lie every day of the week. I just can’t understand why so many people are deceived by the crap that comes out of his mouth.
Google the 14 Defining Characteristics of Fascism and then compare them with what Trump has said, what he has done, and what he says he wants to do. Anybody capable of logical thought can’t help but realize that he’s trying to make sure he implements every one of them and has, in fact, already done so in one instance: Trump is consistently trying to discredit our existing governmental agencies and our main stream media
When I hear of President Trump being called “Hitler” or “Stalin” , the charge comes from types of people who want to call Trump a bad or evil man. Most who use that reference to the worst state leaders of modern history have little to no knowledge of the actual history of that time. They actually have no knowledge of Hitler’s, Stalin’s, Mao’s , or Mussolini’s horrors during their periods of leadership of the national populations caused to suffer during the days of their Fascism’s or Communism’s periods of power over people, or over the populations of people which were severely affected by the respective conquests by the evil-led nations by the worst evil leaders in modernity. It’s all in history, as recorded in so many accurate references, world-wide,that the subject begs the question of how many people have never been exposed to the actual facts. Instead, they turn to the worst of commentaries and consider the matters “done” after that! It would be folly to contradict such believers, like putting forth the true facts while addressing same to an inert object such as a wall.
If Trump kissed one butt cheek of every minority person on the planet earth the people that loved Hillary Clinton and continue to support her money and murder machine would complain that trump is racist because it was the wrong cheek he kissed. For today’s liberal’s the only thing that will satisfy their hate for white people would be to label us all as racists and put us in a furnace and burn us because to them all that matters on this planet is the people of color. The only trouble is that these people clamoring for open borders and free stuff for every person that wants to come here from anywhere in the world would loose the crutch of racism that has been holding them up since slavery and they would have to deal with the reality that just because a nation wants to protect itself from people illegally entering does not make us racist so at some point to protect the country from failing they would need to start turning away illegals and who would they be able to pin the racist label on if there were no white people left.
Joe. You have it figured out intelligently. Don’t let this leftist scum cow you into disgracing your birth right. Never back down before name-calling by commie thugs.
It’s unfortunate that people who have NEVER experienced or witnessed the HORRORS of WWII casually brand opponents with the same iron. Children, hardly out of college, expound their ‘wisdom’ expecting seniors (who have seen the ‘real thing’) to be impressed. Indeed, as Shakespeare so wisely wrote “O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts , And men have lost their reason. Bear with me — “
The truth is that the Democratic party and corrupt media are doing exactly what hitler did . The media is a propaganda machine for the socialist party in America and anybody that is a true American and has any common sense knows it ! They are America’s Enemy!
Who “educated” you about Hitler? The lying news media, communist historians and zionists.
Trump taught you about how the media lies. They have been doing that (telling lies disguised as news) for over 100 years. Yet you believe what they say about hitler, the 3rd Reich and you see a “white supremacist” hiding in every woodpile, nazis parading daily and racists. But all you have to go on is what the lying media tells you. Thus you never criticize communists, zionist barbarity (did you know that FACEBOOK is controlled by Israel?), black supremacy, moslem mass murder or any real events by real criminals and hate criminals at that. Instead you shuffle along adopting the lies told by the commies, democrats, black racists, and moslems. I don’t want to live in the same country with you. As a combat veteran, now disabled because of it, I fought to support the Constitution not make the world safe for ignorant sick cowards. I did not fight for a unified society under the control of minority-parasite scum who hate white people and control everything . We whites don’t have one single group that represents our best interests. The 15 KKK groups in this country are all controlled by the FBI because they want to offer staged phony white supremacists to justify the stupid lies the media constantly preaches.. You didn’t know because the media didn’t tell you. You are ignorant trash and you are dragging the white race down by every breath you draw. How many of you believe that the FBI is NOT a traitorous police state tool of the minority-parasite dictatorship? The commies will soon be back in the saddle again and you will be hunting down white free thinkers because in its rotten soul the left fears angry white men and they should because even a few of us can beat you.
Trump is the exact opposite of Hitler.Just give him a chance and see what he accomplishes.
You are talking to mostly brainwashed fools, not sane people.
Hitler was a god compared to the queer illegal muslim obama and shit for brains biden
Having been in Dachau a number of times beginning in the late 1950s when the camp was just as it was left after the war, with all the buildings in place and letters and writings on the wall written by children and adults it was a very emotional visit. Fifteen years later it had been sanitized so that it was like a war memorial with large areas of green grass a couple of buildings left for historical purposes and three chapels (Catholic, Protestant and Jewish). The advantage of this later visit was a time to talk privately with a Evangelische (Protestant) pastor at the chapel who could share the horrors of Dachau on a first hand basis. Later years came the MacDonalds et al. As a lifelong Republican I am very scared that Trump is following in Hitler’s footsteps and gaining public support because they are dissatisfied with their present life. We really should be listening to the teachings of those three religious chapels which speak of love, healing and support for a global peace.
You talk just like every CONservative republican extant. Back-stabbers like you pushed through 75% of the Obama agenda. Yes obama could not have wreaked so much destruction without republican help. The GOP and CONservatives have always hated and feared Trump. You see, the GOP and CONservatives are bunch of phonies. They are, at heart, just as far left as the democrats. They are more hypocritical too but they are just as evil as the democrats and they are stooges of the democrats. This nation has been running on lies for decades. The biggest lie is that we have a two-party system. LIE! We have one party , that pretends to be two parties. The democrats are in control in spite of President Trump and they will remain in control until we tear this lying false nation down!
When I was in the Army in the early 70’s, we visited Dachau. Walking through the barracks and “ovens” along with the gas chambers was very sobering. We stood in a room by a window that had a picture by it with bodies piled up by the very same window, to the ceiling!! There was over 32,000 killed there, and a massacre of SS soldiers occurred after the camp was liberated.
Some by the enraged Americans, and some by the prisoners. Many of the buildings were still there, and the horrors were real, even 25 years later. We were told that many prisoners were led to their death with music played by the other prisoners, and if you refused to play, you would take the place of the sentenced prisoner! Today, what is left does not tell the full story as it did years ago…
There are no gas chambers or buildings in Dachau dating since WWII. Some have been built since then.m Why do you think that it is ILLEGAL to question the Holocaust in Europe and Canada? Why is free thinking and research about the Holocaust disallowed? What are they hiding? Only fools believe what they are told because fools are too stupid to search until they find the truth. They are too lazy too. Its worthless to talk to people like you. Your biotry has been pounded into you, all your miserable lives.
Visited Dachau in 1956 while dad was stationed in Germany. I was six at the time of our visit. I was left in tears during the tour. Dad asked me why I was crying, my response was “This place is sad, so very sad.” It truly is a very sad place and will always be a very sad place where both children and adults were put to death, by gassing, bullets, cremations while still live, medical experiments. Not only was the crematory still standing; the triple bunks were there as well as the showers from which not only water was sprayed, but also the gas used to kill the prisoners. The killing wall the prisoners stood in front of was pointed out as well as the huge pot used to boil the babies was on view.
A guided tour of Dachau is needed to stop the ignorant persons, i.e., AOL and the other Demoncraps who have absolutely NO idea what a concentration camp actually is.
Mr Trump is not the monster that Hitler was. However, when he calls himself the Chosen One, I think he is coming unraveled like a cheap sweater. Calling the hateful Nazis that marched in Charlottesville good people is definitely Hitleresque. Presently, Mr Trump lacks a propaganda minister with the talent of Joseph Goebels. Kelly Anne Conway and Sarah Sanders can lie with the best of them but they ain’t comparable to Jerry Goebels.
The anti-Trumpers have zero clue about what is really going on. The liberal left, mostly democrats, continue to spread their negative rhetoric because they don’t want to accept and admit how truly ignorant and stupid they are. They are the real DEPLORABLES .
The only thing that will bring us out of this depression is free energy, hydrogen from water, have this as your debate, you can make all the hydrogen, as you drive from a tank of water, you know our space shuttles,are powered by hydrogen / oxygen made from water, tell every one not buy a new car / truck, to boycott the auto company’s, when they can’t sell their pieces of junk low mileage vehicles, they will have to bring out water to hydrogen powered vehicles, and kits to change the vehicles now that we have, just think what our world would be like with free energy. a Porge vapor carburetor sitting in the patient office that gets around 200 mpg, Volkswagen diesel gets 264 mpg, we are getting ripped off by the oil company owned auto company’s
Also audit all the Senator’s and representatives, they have wasted, and stole our money, make them repay all, and tax them.
I have been to Dachau 3 or 4 times total. Each time it becomes more horrible than the time before. What those poor people went through is nothing more than pure horror. Hitler and his henchmen will never be forgiven for what they did to the Jewish people. To see the Gas Showers, the houses and beds the people had to sleep on 50 or more to a bed. No food, clothing to speak about or medicine. It is despicable to see what horrors were carried out there. Hundreds of thousands are buried in one spot as their bodies were burned and the ashes thrown in one spot. If you ever get the chance to go, do go. It is located about 18 miles north of Munich Germany.
AOC is wrong to call the detention centers, concentraation camps, which is a slap in the face to those affected by the Holocaust!
I have been twice. The first time was 1957 before it was cleaned for the tourist. My late wife and her girl friend , myself all teenagers. We snuck in.
As we walked down the main row housing barracks my wife and her girl friend started to cry. We could go no further. They both explained, they bore the guilt of the parents.
Last week 22 years later I returned. I she’d a tear in respect for all who died. In 1957 it was a black & white move. Dark, damp, the death smell embracing body and spirit. Now it was educationally a clean tourist locaton.
For all the talk about Trump being misogynistic, hating foreigners, etc. etc. etc. people seem to overlook the fact that he married THREE WOMEN, and TWO of them are FOREIGNERS, and he has put a lot of women in high positions in his companies and his White House Staff. He has put Blacks in his Cabinet also, and minorities are doing very well since he was elected. But people don’t like to see things that don’t fit their narrative. As my late mother used to say, People only hear and see what they WANT to hear and see.