Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day or Yom Hashoah as the Jews call it. To honor this day, I'm going to publish a few more of my pistures from last years visit to Dachau.
This first picture is the main gate to Dachau. It says, "Work frees" or "Work will set you free" depending on what translation you use. It doesn't really matter because work never set these people free.
The next two pictures show a map of Dachau and a map of Germany showing the locations of all the other concentration camps. Pretty brutal when you think about it. These things were all over Europe, not just in Germany.
I included the picture below so you can see how big this place really was. At it's busiest time it housed more than 30.000 people. It's big, but it's no where near big enough for 30.000 people.
The next picture is of one of the churches built on Dachau. The day before I went to Dachau I watched a movie called "Exorcist-The Beginning". What I got from the movie was that someone a while back had attempted to thwart evil by building something holy over top of something evil. What do I see the next day at one of the most evil places on the planet? A church built right on top of evil. Well, it didn't work in the movie and it didn't make Dachau feel any less evil by building at least 5 churches/synagogues on the sight either.
The last one is the most evil picture I took that day. It's a picture taken inside the crematorium. There are a total of 4 ovens in that room. I had to go through the "shower" room to get there. The thing is, the shower room looked nice and peaceful. Painted all white or light blue, it was hard to tell, it was quiet and didn't look like the most evil room at the camp. The oven room looked to be the most evil room in the place. Thinking about it later on I realized that people that made it to the oven room had already experienced more horror than can be imagined. They were already at peace.
The thought that there are people on this planet that try to deny this ever happened just amazes me. These camps are scattered all over Europe. If you ever make it to Germany or Poland or one of the other countries where these concentration camps are located make sure you visit one. But don't do like I did...go on a crumby day. There were three of us on that trip that day. We were having a good time. It was sunny and warm. We were talking and having a nice time on the way there, but hardly a word was spoken on the way back....
They say those who forget history are bound to repeat it...please remember this day...the Holocaust does not need to ever be repeated.
