What Visiting A Concentration Camp Taught Me As The Son Of A Holocaust Survivor

Last May, I visited my cousin Claudia in Munich. Our grandmothers had lived in Berlin before the war and although my grandmother fled two weeks before the war began, her grandmother remained behind and later was deported to Theresienstadt.

My visit coincided with the approaching anniversary of the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. It was liberated 75 years ago this week, when the United States Seventh Army’s 45th Infantry Division, the 42nd Infantry Rainbow Division, and the 20th Armored Division entered, rescuing 32,000 prisoners. On April 29, 1945, James W. Garner, a provost marshal with the 42nd Infantry Rainbow Division, emotionally recalled it as “the most searing moment of my life.”

I am a child of a Holocaust survivor. According to a research team at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, the trauma inflicted on our parents and grandparents lives in our genetic makeup. So I knew my visit to Dachau would be difficult and different from many other visitors. It would hardly be a visit in the normal sense. I owed it to the victims to pay homage.

The morning we traveled from Munich to Dachau was gray and cold. Although I saw the guard towers before I reached the camp, there was no visible evidence of the actual killing grounds. The visitors center is situated off a residential street. Since there is very little in the center that prepares you for what you’re about to see, it is essential you become familiar with the camp’s background before entering.

Tour guides shepherded small groups near the entrance and spoke in hushed voices. My cousin has led school groups and city delegations through the camp, so she was well equipped to guide me. She took me aside so we could speak privately and explained Dachau was “a school of cruelty where the personnel of all future concentration camps were trained. The camp was an island of evil surrounded by a small town that, for the majority of the camp’s existence, went about its ‘normal’ business. It was the first Nazi concentration camp and literally a training school for the S.S. Opened in 1933, it was the only camp to span the existence of the Third Reich. Its horrors would be replicated throughout a vast network of Nazi concentration camps and sub-camps.”

After my “orientation,” we walked down a path a few hundred yards until we reached the gatehouse. Its entrance was designed to create a sense of fear and foreboding — and it still has that effect on me. “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“Work makes you free”) is emblazoned on the gates — not only Nazi propaganda but an outright lie, as the inmates would be working to their deaths.

Dachau stands as a testament that nobody should be silent in the face of atrocities.

I faced a vast open field that was the roll-call area for anywhere from 6,000 to 32,000 prisoners. Each day, they lined up for hours with little to protect them from the elements, let alone their tormentors holding them captive.

To the left were two reconstructed bunkhouses. The foundations of the other bunkhouses stretched out in two lines behind. Thirty-four bunkhouses held approximately 6,000 people, but by 1945, they housed more than 30,000 people. Each toilet facility only had a few basins and toilets serving more than 200 people, but in the final months they served 500 people or more.

The prison guards’ goal was to demoralize and dehumanize. The inhumanity of the S.S. officers were encouraged through violence. Particularly vile was the “appell,” (roll call) when prisoners were forced to wake before dawn and stand outside to be counted and recounted. The process could go on for hours, sometimes in the snow, sometimes in the blazing sun. All the while, S.S. guards moved through the lines, punishing “infractions such as poor posture and dirty shoes.” The arbitrary rules made everyday life unbearable. For example, before roll call, all beds had to be made the same way, with pillows and blankets set in exactly the same position. If they were a fraction off, the result was punishment.

Punishment included detention in the bunker, floggings and standing at attention for extremely long periods. One photo on display particularly sickened me. It is of the so-called pole hanging “tree.” A tree erected in the courtyard was used to hang prisoners from their arms for an hour or more at a time.

The morning of my visit, I wore a sweater, jacket and scarf, but I still was cold inside the bunkhouse. I couldn’t imagine the privation of those who had to live there with only one set of threadbare clothes. Inside the barracks, you see vast images of tragedy, torture and masochism. Provided is information that isn’t emotional or sensationalized, just laid out matter-of-factly.

The guards used psychological torture to dehumanize the prisoners. Coat hooks and shelves in the barracks emphasized no one had a coat or anything to put on the shelves. Exhibits explained how prisoners were tortured in the dead of the night, between midnight and 3 a.m. This was intentional so prisoners remaining in the barracks were kept awake by incessant screams. Windows were left open to make the sound louder. If a guard was found to be the least bit compassionate, he, too, could be imprisoned.

As the tour went on, I gradually became emotionless and numb, and had to stop reading the survivor accounts. My breathing became more difficult.

As I walked through the camp, I noticed the buildings were laid out asymmetrically, with trees lining the walkways. Why was such care given to creating a place only designed to inflict enormous suffering?

I came across the shooting range where, after looking closely, I saw bullet holes. Past the bunkhouses, at the far end of the camp, we walked across a bridge over a stream. I stopped to take in the beauty of running water and for a moment, forgot where I was. But in the next second, I was face to face with the crematorium with its four ovens.

Upon entering, you are in the room where prisoners disrobed. In the next room, you immediately see the showerheads. I hesitated before stepping into that room. Most visitors went quickly in and out and stepped on as little of the floor as possible. When it was our turn to enter, besides ourselves, there was only a young couple taking photos of each other. I felt nauseous. I stepped to the side and froze while they finished taking their photos, making sure they exited the room.

I hadn’t spoken much since I entered the camp, but now I turned to my cousin and said, “I see the showerheads where the gas must have been released from.” She answered, “No. Actually, it was released from the wall behind us through a spigot and, depending on where you were standing in the room, determined how quickly you would die.” I now saw the slots outside the “showers” where the poison gas tabs were inserted. It was 75 years later and I, too, was fooled by the function of the showerheads. My chest tightened. I exited thinking of the millions who didn’t walk out of rooms like this in the vast network of Nazi concentration camps.

The next few rooms were where the corpses were incinerated. There were too many bodies toward the end, so they piled and stored the bodies in an adjacent room until time was found to get rid of the evidence.

On that same end of the camp are various memorials and religious structures that have been built or established, including a Jewish memorial, a Catholic convent, a Russian Orthodox memorial and a Protestant Church of Reconciliation. It was a relief to enter the Jewish memorial and listen to a man reciting Hebrew prayers. My cousin explained that when she leads Israeli youth groups, they often finish their visit by holding a service inside the memorial, discussing what they had just experienced.

Looking upward toward the main source of light, I noticed a menorah at the top of the roof, allowing light to enter. You are no longer in darkness and when the light appears, your faith is partially restored. As I continued my walk through camp, I suddenly felt the presence of someone walking behind me. But when I turned to look, no one was there. The air became heavy again, and I felt the sadness and grief of the place. The negative energy was overwhelming.

Leaving the camp, there is a statue of a prisoner. Below are carved the words, “Den Toten zur Ehr, den Lebenden zur Mahnung” (“To honor the dead and warn the living”).

This place is a warning to all of us that nothing can long endure without respect for human rights and human dignity. Dachau stands as a testament that nobody should be silent in the face of atrocities. When a government targets, dehumanizes and strips a group of people of their civil rights, it is our obligation to stand up and to declare, “Never again.” Truly a lesson for today.

George J. Fogelson’s mother escaped Germany on a Kindertransport to England on June 13, 1939. His grandparents fled to Denmark from Berlin two weeks before the outbreak of war. The entire family immigrated to the United States in October 1940, settling in Van Nuys.