An Unforgettable Piece of History

Today we travelled two long train rides and a bus to get to one of the most life changing places I could ever visit, The Dachau Concentration Camp in Dachau, Germany. I can't even put into words the way I felt being there.

Coming from a German heritage, it is always interesting to learn about the history of your culture. However, the German culture does have an unfortunately dark history at times. However, the most interesting part of it all, is the way the culture of today recognizes those unforgettable events as moments to learn and never repeat. They make a valiant effort to not suppress the facts of their past, even as ugly as the Holocaust.

In my family, both my grandparents on my father's side were born and raised in Germany. Around the 1930's when Hitler began to rise to power the foresaw bad things in the future so decided to leave the country and migrate to the United States to start a family. I always think about what may have been the future for my grandparents if they had stayed. My grandfather was passionate about his disagreements with the Hilter Regime ideals, I could only imagine what would happen if he had lived through it.

The Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Park was an amazingly emotional place. The atmosphere there is completely quiet and somber, with all the visitors reading and some even reminiscing. Prior to my trip, my director assigned us to outside research of a topic we would be visiting. I was assigned to research Munich Open Space, which includes Dachau. One of the most interesting things I learned was that during the Hitler Regime many of the lush green open spaces were paved over or destroyed to serve as marching grounds and evoke a symbol of the power and strength the regime had over the common people. Additionally, Hilter attempted to destroy some of the German people's highest values: art, history, and culture.

This is a breath taking walk past all of the prisoners' housing that has now been burned to the ground. 

The most amazing part of visiting Dachau, today, was reading about what happened in the memorial museum. Although we read about it in our history classes, it doesn't seem quite as real as seeing it all in person. Being in Germany, itself, you can feel the history of those dark ages. I think that helps connect me more to my heritage and understanding how my family's choices affected the rest of their lives, the son's, and mine (in a way).

Unfortunately, were back to rain here in Munich. In this case, I think

- Michelle