Jewish World Review April 13, 1999 /27 Nissan, 5759
Michael D. Braun
A journey into the
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 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.
Dachau Diarist
heart of darkness
A Dachau survivor's descendant returns ... but the experience was not what he had expected.
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
Michael Braun is an attorney practicing securities law in Los Angeles. He may be reached by clicking here.