One of my biggest weaknesses is travelling. It enriches me. On one hand, the wonderful nature in Norway, Switzerland , France and Denmark etc instills me with peace, inspiring places like Nobel Museum in Stockholm , CERN Switzerland , The Neils Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and The Freud Museum in Vienna etc inspires me and on the other hand some places take away words from my pen, takes away thoughts from my mind and senses from within. I have not written about those places till now. Since life is not a bed of roses, it includes both good and bad, I decided to write about those places as well, which can never veil our mind with caresses of nature and can only make us ashamed and sorrowful instead.
Finally, I tried to gather enough courage to write about one such place - "Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site". I am incapable of finding a word or sentence which could do justice in describing the brutality done on human beings by human beings inside this camp.
Dachau is a place in Southern Germany, which was the site of the first concentration camp built by Hitler to torture and kill political opponents, Jews, gypsies, soviet soldiers and basically anyone who opposed him.
This camp became the model for all subsequent camps built all over the third Reich.
Dachau was one of the first concentration camps and is the only camp to have existed throughout the entire twelve years of Nazi rule. In the early years, it was the largest and most well-known concentration camp. The name "Dachau" soon spread fear and terror throughout Germany.
This old photograph shows the train line which stopped at the camp and brought in the prisoners.
The same place now. The child is probably unaware of what happened here in the past.
After disembarking from the train, the prisoners had to pass through this gate to enter the camp. The words on the gate read "Arbeit Macht Frei" which means "Work sets you free". The prisoners were supposed to work themselves to death to finally become "free".
The place looks very pristine today, but it was and will always remain the site of some of the most inhuman torture prisons.
The call to action by the socialists against Hitler were to end in defeat mainly due to disunity among the socialists and communists, who constituted the most powerful political forces in Germany during the 1920s.
The bill of rights for the prisoners.
The table of TORTURE !
Frequently, prisoners who died of torture were officially recorded as having committed suicide.
Death was everywhere...Perhaps one had to die to start living.
In the end, most prisoners were mere skeletons with a layer of skin on their bodies, devoid of everything human.
A somber sculpture that summarizes many things.
The greatest tragedy is that the call for "Never Again" has since remain unheard. There is no end to conflict and unfreedom in the world. Perhaps the call will always remain unanswered.
The most poignant moment of our visit was at this place, when a small child was asking his father "Why have they kept flowers here?" . The father was trying in vain to tell him something...I think every generation carries this shame.
