Dachau and the Nazi Terror

. . . humanity — that is, resistance against [a] system forced upon the people . . .
 — Hermann Langbein

I was ashamed of my passivity and ignorance.

This was where the path of an unpolitical person living in seclusion led.

Helpless and lost, one is dragged along by the raging torrent.
 — Ladislaus Ervin-Deutsch

When I was a kid, World War II held a certain fascination for me, but it wasn’t really the war that was interesting, but the machines and planes that were used throughout the war.  I really liked to draw, and the large bombers, small fighters, and intriguing, unique vehicles like half-tracks, captured my young imagination and were some of the most common subjects of my early attempts at artwork.  As I got older, I came to better understand the horrors associated with World War II, including the Holocaust and the atrocities committed by the Empire of Japan.  There were also all the battles throughout the world that caused so many deaths and so much destruction.  I got a better understanding of the scale of that destruction while visiting Germany at the end of my mission to Russia.  I was also able to visit Dachau and get a small idea of the scale of the horror of the Holocaust.

Dachau and the Nazi Terror: 1933–1945: Testimonies and Memoirs edited by Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel (ISBN: 3-9808587-0-7) is a collection of memoirs written up by a variety of people who, in some way, experienced the Nazi concentration camps.  The volume contains thoughts from a couple different German Jews, a member of the French resistance, American liberators, Jews from other parts of Europe, including Poland, what was then Czechoslovakia, and even the further-away Latvia.  It was interesting to read the variety of experiences.  The common denominators were that everyone, sooner or later, experienced the terror of the concentration camps and that the vast majority of those interred were there because of their ethnicity or because of their political beliefs.  Other than the two short testimonies provided by American liberators, each of the former prisoners discussed the drudgery of prison life, the daily struggle for life that got harder and harder the longer the war dragged on, and extreme contrast between the brutality of so many and the kindness of a few soldiers and citizens who rose above the prevailing patterns of thought and behavior.  It was interesting to read about the various commentators’ lives before and during the war, their varying degrees of commitment to their religious or political ideals, and their varied responses to life in the concentration camps.

The book is, obviously, likely to be tough reading for some.  It is, nevertheless, extremely interesting and full, I found, of lessons.  I was impressed with the strength of all those who wrote.  Writing or speaking about such experiences is not often easy, but it is important, and I am glad these people made it happen.  Without their voices, the lessons of time are lost and forgotten.  It is said that if a people does not learn from history, it is bound to repeat history’s mistakes.  That thought did not leave me for one second as I read this book.  Entire peoples were slated for extermination simply because of their ethnicity.  An official policy of discrimination and hate was enacted by a government simply because someone looked different or had a different ethnic background.  In addition to the ethnic hatred, there was political intolerance and hatred.  People who thought differently than the official line were first ostracized, then imprisoned, and then killed.  The Nazis, socialists, had no love for the communists.  I, too, don’t agree with the tenets of communism, but as I read, I found it horrible that the marketplace of ideas wasn’t allowed to let people say their piece and have others make their own choices on accepting or rejecting those ideas.  Especially troubling was the experience of one prisoner who went from the Nazi concentration camps to the Russian gulag.  Both of the intolerant positions described above have similarities to what we see in politics today.  Another lesson to be learned from the memoirists is that political involvement is key.  One writer mournfully noted that he had always been apolitical, the same as so many of the people he knew.  That lack of involvement, he figured, had allowed the minority to take control and take things in such a negative direction.  A third lesson worth mentioning (although there are more) is that the writers did not display any hatred.  One told of coming across one of his former guards after being liberated.  While some of the prisoners did act out violently toward this former guard, some of the Jews, including the writer, turned away from the scene and did not take their turn attacking the man even though they could have easily made the case that they were justified in doing so.  Many writers commented fondly on the guards that treated them humanely or the civilians who risked punishment, but, all the same, tried to help the prisoners.  The prisoners often looked for opportunities to see the good around them and to persevere even in the face of intense trial.  One noted that this was a characteristic present in many of those who survived.  That is a powerful lesson for us.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.