I am learning so much here this week. Yesterday was a day of preparation for our visit to Dachau today. We asked a lot of questions then and have still more questions now - though many are ones we are asking of ourselves.
I've learned more about WWII this semester, realizing that the teaching in high school so many years ago was very minimal. As I'm studying with so many "young" college students on this trip, and hear their questions, I have to wonder why I haven't asked more questions along the way. Today, the reality of a concentration camp lay before my eyes in pictures and on film. I've seen some pictures before, but nothing like the magnitude in the museum. I never imagined that Dachau would be so large, and what we saw was just a sixth of the land mass that the concentration camp was composed of!
There were only two bunkhouses rebuilt on the property, but there were rock and conrete footings for the other twenty eight that held whom Germany felt were inferior. To be standing on the ground where 30,000 had died, where over 200,000 people from over 30 countries were held prisoner was difficult. When I first walked through the gate "Arbeit macht frei" (Freedom through work), I could only imagine what the prisoners felt like as they walked through the first time and many for the last time. The gate opens to a very large, open area that leaves much to the imagination and leaves quite a desloate impression. It's not until you see the pictures of sickness, overcrowding, starvation and death in the museum and read the memorials and explanations of the sites, that you begin to get a glimpse of what it must have been like and that's what is so humbling -- our understanding is but a glimpse.
Being here this week has made me realize all the more how devastating war is. We are talking with people this week who have lived where the bombs have been dropped. We are sitting in a palace that suffered damage from those bombs. And we are getting to know people whose lives have been directly affected by war. Getting to know people whose lives have directly affected by war ... Daddy, please forgive me for not asking more questions before now. It's not that I didn't care, I just really never thought it was something you'd want to talk about and you may not! The only story I DO know about the war -- I'm so thankful that you came down that mountain with an infected knee!
My, it's been a day of much thought and much emotion. Our group of eleven has missed Dan so much on this trip, but feel like we're experiencing more than "just a trip to Salzburg" this week. We are learning more about ourselves, getting to know each other and learning about others within and without our United States borders. As I walked back through the gate to the bus, it was with great humility and great thankfulness for freedom - freedom that has been so costly to so many.
