JWR Wandering Jews

Jewish World Review April 13, 1999 /27 Nissan, 5759


Michael D. Braun


Dachau Diarist

A journey into the
heart of darkness


A Dachau survivor's descendant returns ... but the experience was not what he had expected.


THERE WAS SOMETHING HAUNTING about taking the train. The aged box cars on a parallel track seemed frozen in time. I quieted my thoughts. After all, the train was a necessary evil. This bitter irony was not lost on me as the train sped from Munich to Dachau on probably the very same tracks that led thousands of innocent people to their deaths more than a half a century ago.

Once before I had attempted to visit Dachau only to find the camp closed. "All museums are closed Mondays," said the guard. But how could they close the camp on this day? On any day? Were there no injustices, no atrocities, no deaths on Mondays? I returned to Dachau nearly four years later. It was a Wednesday.

My family, like many of those from Eastern Europe, is small. I had three grandparents, an uncle, an aunt and two cousins. The rest of my family had been exterminated. During the war both grandmothers were hidden with their children. Both grandfathers were taken away by the Nazis. One perished in slave labor on the Russian front. The other was shipped from his home in Hungary to Auschwitz, then to Dachau-Mettenheim and finally to Waldlager from which he was ultimately liberated on February 5, 1945.

My surviving grandfather never spoke of his time in hell, yet even with this burden he managed to live life to the fullest, taking advantage of every moment of every day, relishing the simple fact that he was.

I had been to the Wiesenthal Center, the Holocaust Museum and Yad Vashem. I thought I was prepared for the emotion of Dachau. At first, I was happy to be a part of large tour group thinking that a collective experience would somehow be cathartic. We listened to the doleful biography of the camp and toured the museum which was no more than a sparse littering of atrocities from the camp photo album.

Mounted below each picture, a terse description translated into several languages. Surprisingly, the pictures weren’t even all from Dachau, as if there hadn?t been enough atrocities at this camp to cover the walls end to end a hundred times over.

At the conclusion of the museum tour, visitors were shown grainy black and white footage of Holocaust atrocities. The poor quality of the film, accompanied by a monotone and detached narrative, allowed the viewer to register the events on an intellectual level but prevented them from creating an empathic connection with the victims.

I had entered what Joseph Conrad described as the heart of darkness -- a place where everything is corrupt, nihilistic, malign and evil -- the physical manifestation of the darkest part of man’s soul. Like Conrad?s protagonist Kurtz, I longed to scream "the horror, the horror" but could not, because I simply didn?t feel it. I had prepared for an emotional outpouring but was faced with drought.

Having studied the Holocaust throughout the years, I was mostly acquainted with the tour guide’s lecture, so I trailed behind the group hoping to find an emotional link to the past through my solitude. I approached the original entrance to the camp with the disdainful lie still emblazoned on the iron gates: Arbeit Macht Frei --- Work sets you free. I grasped the gate expecting to feel the anguish of thousands of souls but all I felt was the chill of cold metal on my hand.

All the original bunkers at Dachau had been razed. One exact replica was rebuilt when Dachau became a museum. How ironic, a model within a model. After all, Dachau was Hitler?s first and oldest concentration camp. A model used in propaganda films to sell the idea of mass extermination to his minions. The bunker was pristine, as were the gas chambers. The ovens suffered from no wear and tear and looked like they hadn?t even baked a loaf of bread, much less had been used to incinerate thousands of Nazi victims.

As the tour concluded and the hundred or so visitors slowly departed, I stood alone in the ante room of the gas chamber and wondered how such a horrific place could leave me devoid of emotion.

As I looked around, I noticed that none of the other visitors had left with tears in their eyes. It was then I realized that the Wiesenthal Center, the Holocaust Museum and Yad Vashem had all been built, in part, in memorial to Hitler’s innocent victims.

Each of those museums presented images and words designed to create an empathic link between visitor and victim. Dachau’s purpose was just the opposite. It was built in a remote location, behind large secretive walls designed to house "undesirables" -- a place where a people could be exterminated in silence and forgotten. Rather than memorializing its victims, Dachau had been sanitized of their memory.

True to its original design, Dachau was a place longing to be forgotten. It was then that the rain began to fall in a torrent of tears, a natural reaction and fitting tribute to this monstrous place.

Mr. Zaidenstadt
As I watched the rain’s vain attempt to cleanse the camp, I finally saw what my heart had longed for. He was a solemn grey figure that approached in slow labored movements. He was introduced to me as Martin Zaidenstadt, a Jew, a member of the Polish resistance and a Dachau survivor.

Mr. Zaidenstadt was happy to tell me his story, for this is why he still comes to the camp. Mr. Zaidenstadt was part of a small group of Polish soldiers captured by the Nazis and interned in Dachau. As Jews and resistance members, he and his comrades were to be summarily executed. By some twist of fate, Mr. Zaidenstadt’s true identity was obscured and he was incorporated into the slave labor details, as his comrades were executed. After liberation and a brief stint in Israel, Mr. Zaidenstadt returned to Dachau, took up residence and has visited the camp on nearly a daily basis for the past 52 years, vowing never to forget his fallen comrades.

Mr. Zaidenstadt took me on a personal tour of Dachau, detailing in broken English some of many atrocities that had been committed on these grounds. His mind’s eye painted the camp as it was those many years ago -- the forced prostitution, the starvation, the pestilence, the medical experiments, the suffering.

Finally, I felt.

In parting, Mr. Zaidenstadt allowed me to take his picture, but insisted it be in front of a rather nondescript and somewhat obscured memorial. As he stood there, he translated the inscription: To Honor The Dead And To Remind the Survivors.

Looking at Mr. Zaidenstadt, I then realized what memory I was to take from Dachau. The memory is as much about those that died as it is about those that survived. It cannot be wedded to a physical place nor limited to a particular time, for it is an ever lasting tribute to the triumph of the human spirit.

It is the collective memory of a people past, present and future who will never forget, who will say never again and who live life to the fullest, taking advantage of every moment of every day, relishing the simple fact that we are.


Michael Braun is an attorney practicing securities law in Los Angeles. He may be reached by clicking here.

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©1999, Michael Braun