Prior to four months ago I (similar to most people in this world) had never been to a concentration camp. Now writing this I have been to several camps, multiple times. Which is not so normal.
At Uni I became very interested in what we called ‘dark
tourism’. It included things like the killing fields in Phnom Pen, the 9/11
memorial in New York and the concentration camps scattered around Europe. I
visited the Sydney Jewish Museum and recommended it to all my friends as a
sobering and educating visit. I went to Europe and spent a day in the Jewish
Ghettos in Prague and Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam but I never made it to a
concentration camp.
When I found out that on our Topdeck training trip we would
be visiting the three main camps that our trips go to, I was excited to be
fulfilling something I had wanted to do for a while.
Dachau was the first concentration camp that we visited. My
excitement had turned to a slight unease because of the spiels that the trip
leaders had been doing leading up to the camp. Some of them found themselves
being serious for the first time in the trip and others even shed tears describing
the atrocities that had happened here. The other thing that had me feeling apprehensive
was the reactions of other people who had visited before when I said that I was
excited. They looked at me like I was crazy and now I kind of understand why.
Dachau concentration camp is on the outskirts of the town of
Dachau and the whole time that prisoners were held here, there were civilians
living just a few kilometres away. It is located amongst trees and on the other
side of a deep, swiftly running stream and between the many barracks and infirmaries
are huge trees lining the long avenue. It was the first of the Nazi
concentration camps to be opened and was originally just for political
prisoners but was later expanded to be a work camp as well. I walked in
nervously, unsure of what I was going to see. I almost tip toed around the
empty prison cells and courtyard until the huge memorial statue struck me dumb.
I stood staring at the twisted mass of sharp bodies that were intertwined in an
agony that was palpable, I could feel the metal yearning to rise upwards in
escape and my mind just went numb, unable to deal with the strong emotions that
it conveyed. Walking through the museum and back to the coach I did not make
eye contact with anyone, still unsure of how I felt I was in my head trying to
work it out and eye contact with others would break this inner dialogue. I was
broken from this reverie eventually but it had started my re-think of how I
felt about concentration camps.
Mauthausen was the next camp that we visited. The first
thing that struck me was how beautiful the area is that it is located in. Perched on top of a hill it overlooks a large river
and fields filled with golden mustard flowers. There was not a cloud in the sky
and I particularly noticed how quiet it was, the only noise was the birds
singing in the trees which had buds just beginning to open. The realisation
that there had most likely been days just like this 70 years ago when the camp
had been operating was what occupied my mind. Prisoners would have been
starving, tired and sick and yet as they walked the death stairs down to the
mine to work they would have been able to look across this beautiful and blissful
countryside. I can’t imagine that it would have brought them the feeling of
calm that it did to me, more likely is that they felt tormented, like the horse
with the carrot dangled over its nose; so close and yet so far. Down in the
mine, which today is green with grass, it’s cliff faces overgrown with vines
and shrubs and it’s small lakes so still that they reflect the faces looking
over into them it was hard to imagine that once it was an area of grey and mud
and constant noise and movement. Standing on the stairs leading from the quarry
up to the camp that had been witness to tens of thousands of deaths felt like
stepping on top of a grave. I attempted just a few of them before I became too uncomfortable.
Auschwitz was the last camp that we visited and by this time
I was very nervous as to how I would react. I had heard many accounts of how deeply
some people were affected by it and wondered what it was that I was about to
see. Differently to what we had experienced at Dachau and Mauthausan the
weather was cold and wet and grey. We huddled in silence, our hoods up on our
raincoats and already withdrawing inside our own heads as we realised what it
was we were looking at. The site of one of the most disgusting and unforgivable
atrocities that has happened in human history is a difficult thing to get your
head around when it is right in front of you. There was no beautiful scenery
surrounding this camp, just flat dreariness and I think that that is
appropriate. We shuffled inside and put on our headsets so that our tour guide could
project right into our heads and as she began to tell us stories of the camp I
felt myself building up walls and feeling incredibly alone. My body and mind went
numb unable to know what to do with the horrible information that I was being
given and I felt like a pair of eyes walking around and observing but not
interacting in any way. In a room filled with the shoes of those that died I
began to feel physically sick and started shaking. I was hugging myself trying
to stay in control of my body when our guide told us about the medical
experiments that were conducted on children, the elderly, the disabled and
twins. That broke me. I started sobbing and went to a window to try and remove
and control myself. No one came to see how I was, they were all too shaken themselves.
There was another huge shock yet to come though. We were taken into the gas
chambers, still dark with chipped paint and most noticeably, gouges from where
prisoners fingernails had scraped through the plaster trying to escape when
they realised what was happening to them. At the end of the tour we stood in
silence waiting for the coach. We made eye contact now, but didn’t need to say
anything because it was obvious that everyone was shaken. I asked the tour
guide how she did it day after day and she told me it was hard and that there
were many many guides with a high turnover rate because of how draining it was
but that as a local she had wanted to tell this story for years. I think we all
respected what our trainer Lyndsay had said before we came in. She had told us
that she no longer enters the camp when she is on tour, not because of how it
makes her feel but because she doesn’t ever want to not feel that, for
Auschwitz to become somewhere normal for her.
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