Dachau
August 6th, 2006
Yes, Dachau, the first major concentration camp opened by the Nazis.
As a futurist visiting Dachau, I had a similar viewpoint that I touched upon in the recent post on Berlin: how looking back at awful events can help us today and that the awful events of today, when taken in a historical perspective, are not as bad as we think they might be. So many people I talk to are depressed and nervous about the direction of the world today. While I think that there will most definitely be rough and turbulent times ahead, I am optimistic about the future when looking 10, 20 and 30 years out.
As I have written in ‘Blog Origins’ and am writing in my book, I believe that humanity will have the opportunity to take our collective next step in the decades ahead. To be able to do so we must fully come to terms with where we have failed in the past so that we can prepare ourselves for the opportunity that lies ahead.
Last week I visited Dachau, which is in a suburb of Munich. Here are the facts:
-it opened in 1933 and remained a concentration camp until liberation in 1945
-during that 12 year period approximately 206,000 people entered the camp
-the camp was first set up as a place for political enemies of the state after Hitler had a law passed through the legislature allowing him to hold anyone in ‘protective custody’ without the due process of the courts
-from 1945 until 1964 it remained a refugee housing camp due to the extreme post WWII housing shortage.
-Dachau was the camp that Himmler and his SS used as the model for all other camps in terms of organizational structure
-Dachau was not one of the major extermination camps; many people died there, but it was not the killing factory that other camps were.
Today, Dachau is a memorial and a museum run by the German government. There is a fairly large museum building that tells the story of the camp. One can also walk around the grounds, see a reconstructed barracks building, walk the grounds, see the memorial churches and temple and then tour the crematorium and gas chambers. What remains is about a fourth of the area that existed during the war, due to suburban encroachment.
The overall experience of the visit is incredibly powerful. I was extremely moved when standing in the yard where the inmates had to stand every day for role call. The exhibits all point out the horror of man’s inhumanity to man. It is a true look at the dark side of humanity. To some degree every visitor to Dachau leaves with a better understanding of what intolerance and evil can unleash and the death and horror that results.
So, the day I visited there must have been several thousand visitors. These visitors were multi-national, multi-ethnic, multi-racial and all ages from infants to the elderly. It seemed as though a third to half of all visitors were using the audio guides and taking the hours it took for the full tour. Since there is no admission, it is probably hard to know exactly the number of people who visit Dachau in a year [though I did email the governmental agency in charge of managing the memorial asking this question; no response], but if you assume peak visitation in the summer and lower attendance for the rest of the year, it still means that in the course of one year there are probably more people visiting Dachau than were ever kept there as inmates. This means that hundreds of thousands of people from all around the world have and are experiencing the powerful lessons that Dachau teaches us about evil, persecution based on religion and beliefs and what can happen when leaders are given powers to act on such beliefs.
The phrase “Never again†took on a much larger meaning for me after my visit to Dachau, and I know it does for most of those that visit. Let’s hope that every day; thousands of people from all around the world also learn that our dark side has already created enough horror. We must face the future with this lesson clearly in mind.
August 6th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
The day I visited Dachau has stayed with me, and I am sure will forever. Thank you for writing about it. As an interesting coincidence, if you believe in them, Mom has chosen Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search For Meaning” as her first book in her new section on her website called Susan’s Bookshelf. Check it out, http://www.susanjeffers.com.
Great minds think alike!
Sending you this post with much love,
Leslie
August 6th, 2006 at 1:16 pm
I saw the Special where Pope Benedict walked from the entrance of the concentration camp to the building where the Holocaust survivors were. What a spiritual event. I watched as he walked through the camp. Thoroughly emotional.
August 6th, 2006 at 6:17 pm
David – you mention people that are worried or nervous about our collective future – I’m one of them. And I don’t think enough people are. Namely, political leaders and heads of large global companies. For me, this nervousness centers solely on the finite amount of energy (oil) the world has.
Where is all the dedicated science in trying to develop a synthetic gasoline? Or does it already exist (consipiracy theroists please step forward)? I think the world will be a truly frightful place when we are out of oil. Provided an alternative does not exist. If we do not find an alternative, global commerce as we know it will cease – just one scary example.
Too dramatic?
August 7th, 2006 at 5:57 am
Dave-
I agree that the single greatest impediment to humanity’s future is its overwhelming reliance on petroleum based energy. We are passing through peak oil right now and experts predict the world running out of oil sometime around 2040.
We need to do everything we can to slow down oil consumption worldwide. That will give us more time to find the alternative(s). We need visionary leadership at the highest levels of government standing tall to apply science and everything we know to solving this problem. In 1961 President Kennedy told American that we would put a man on the moon and return him safely to earth before the end of the decade. This vision was made before we had even had a man orbit the earth. Guess what? In July 1969 -before the end of the decade- we returned men safely from the moon.
Conserve energy, get others to do so, and everyone vote for people who promise all out commitment on all fronts to solve the energy crisis. Nothing less will do.
David
August 7th, 2006 at 8:20 am
Dachau was silently accepted by the world and became one of the earliest and most effective tools of Nazi terror that resulted in compliance and obediance. If Dachau had not been treated as a dark undershadow by Europe and the western world Hitler might not have had his way. More protest and resistance would have been encouraged, the transition to death camps might have slowed or even been avoided. Who knows, even there might have been a different standard for the Gulags.
The evils in men that created Dachau persist. What is at issue is if the memory of Dachau can help to protect the world against the building of modern day Dachaus. Implicit in the call for Democracy is acting on the lesson of Dachau.
August 7th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
David – call me an optimistic realist. Some thought triggered by your blog:
Interesting – though a bit (a lot?) simplistic. Nevertheless, it makes me reflect on perhaps every generation that ever lived – the days of their youth are always “the good old days”, it seems regardless of what might have happened. Provided it didn’t happen to you, I suppose.
Then there is the “pendulum theory” (my description) that human direction tends always to go astray until the consequences outpace the benefits, or the implications of taking the easy way out. This I believe in. Unfortunately, we don’t seem to learn from the mistakes of previous generations, or to appreciate that human nature is today what it was in the past. Looking back at some of our great Presidents – most, if not all, were devoted students of history. He who understands human nature and where it can lead almost always makes the better balanced decisions.
Think about it, we are all basically acquisitive and territorial. Experience has taught that we need rules to create a framework within which we can co-exist. But, we are all a bit selfish and guilty of beating the system when we can. Problem is those who rise to leadership positions tend toward arrogance and the feeling that they are above the rules. Present such folks with extraordinary power and/or wealth, and it seems in too many cases people suffer.
In our country, both business and politics (I’m not headed toward term limitations – though I still believe strongly in the concept) live in a short-term world. It’s a matter of quarterly results, or two-year terms, etc. I read a synopsis of an interview with the Chairman of Toyota Motor Corp (who surpassed Ford in US unit sales last month). He said Toyota has two plans, one short term and the other long term. When asked “how long term”, he replied that that plan went beyond our lifetimes.
Another observation I heard during the recent world cup activities in Germany. The commentator said he had never seen so many German flags flying before. It has taken sixty years for the WW II veterans and their children, most ridden with shame and guilt over the war and especially the holocaust, to be slowly overwhelmed by a generations 3 and 4 that know of the horrors only in the telling, second or even third or fourth hand. It was all long ago, and now it is time for pride to creep back into their culture. That’s not a bad thing but it makes me think that phrases like “never again” fade with time and distance and the absence of hands-on experience with actual, terrible events.
I think it was Freud that observed that most people live lives shifting between mild depression and mild euphoria, with the occasional excessive spike in one direction or the other. So it is with the human race – which is, after all, only a collective extension of each of us.
August 7th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
George-
I agree. The interesting reference point for the current situation in the US from Dachau is that Dachau was opened up after Hitler had legislation passed that allowed the ‘executive branch’ of the German government to put political opponents of the Nazis and Jews in ‘protective’ custody without the due process of the court system. Sound a bit like the Patriot Act and other actions taken by the Bush Administration. Dictatorships never start out looking like dictatorships.
August 7th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
Hal-
Very interesting comments. A lot of fundamental truths are simple, so speaking or writing them can indeed sound ‘simplistic’. Your last sentence says it all, at least in terms of a positive future. The solution, and the enemy are both us.
David
August 8th, 2006 at 8:20 am
David:
I visited Dachau in 1972, seven years after finishing high school. Since I had excellent German teachers in elementary, middle and high school, I could read the materials in the museum, which had been (I believe) the German mess hall (I believe it was still original). The first memorable sight was the English signs explaining the exhibits. My German was good enough that I could see where some of the original German was far more dramatic than the English translation. I remember one exhibit for which the sign said something like: “Daily Diet of a Prisoner.” When I read the original German mentioning number of grams of rice (per prisoner), I also noted that it gave the caloric content. IF my memory is correct, it was 900 calories, a starvation diet.
The other memorable sight was at the crematorium. A drawing showed that the lime pit had been in front of it. I could not bring myself to walk up to the door (which was possible then, maybe not now) because I would have walked over the location of the lime pit.
I occasionally tell this story to people whom I know. They always become very quiet.
In between those two locations, I saw the reconstructed prisoner barracks and could imagine myself there. It was scary.
Thank you for letting me share this with a wider group.
August 8th, 2006 at 2:05 pm
Hi David,
Thank you for this post. Great topic to bring to light during these challenging times.
January 10th, 2013 at 4:54 pm
Dachau | Evolution Shift – David Houle, Futurist, Disintermediation, Future Trends, Future of Energy is fun! My mother was telling me about it last week!
January 22nd, 2013 at 8:17 am
A friend of mine linked your page on Facebook and that is how I discovered it. Very interesting stuff.