By MICHAEL APPLEMAN
Why did I visit Dachau three times? The response is clear: It has been a profound, instructive, somber and life-altering experience.
Dachau concentration camp was established in March 1933 by the government of Nazi Germany as the first camp for political prisoners. It became a model and SS training center for all ensuing camps.
Visiting this memorial site is, strikingly, a simple 10-mile day trip from Munich. Here one will experience viscerally and kinesthetically how Hitler and the Germans executed the “final solution.”
A person is not prepared for this horror experience. You cannot reconcile with the idea of a just and all-knowing God. Each of my three visits, over a span of 50 years, continues to influence and stimulate my weltanschauung, my worldview.
My first witness and encounter to Dachau transpired in 1969, at the age of 21, newly graduated from the University of Minnesota. I traveled with my medical-resident radiologist friend, George, throughout 13 European countries. As two Jews, visiting Dachau was not optional.
When George and I left Munich and quickly arrived at the Dachau train station, we hired a cab to the camp. I, in German, asked the driver: “Wie viele Menschen leben in der Stadt Dachau?” (How many people live in the city of Dachau?) The driver responded, “30,000 Personen.” “Und wie viele vor dem Krieg?” (How many before the war?) He responded, “15,000 Personen.” An increase of 15,000 persons since the war!
Why would Germans want to live in a city where thousands of Jews — along with Roma, homosexuals and political prisoners — were murdered daily during the war? The reason still baffles and daunts me.
It was a rainy and drizzly day in 1969. I was depressed and teary-eyed seeing the barracks, the crematoria, the hundreds of photos in the museum portraying the horrific medical experiments, the photos of piled-up, emaciated Jews — not to mention the photos of marching children, separated from the parents.
Dachau served as a prototype and model for the other concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Theresienstadt.
George and I visited the camp for several hours. We left somber and stunned. Yet it was disgusting and unpalatable to hear the loud and bellicose Germans at a soccer field directly next to the camp. We were in profound thought, processing our somber experience but distracted by thousands of Germans boisterously cheering and yelling for their soccer teams. Could the Germans not hear the screams of the Jews next door.
How could Münchner (Munich residents) claim ignorance of the massacring of thousands of prisoners just 20 minutes away? This conflicting and paradoxical question has haunted me to this day.
I visited Dachau, for the second time, 25 years ago with my wife, Mickey, and our three children, Alaina, Joshua and Danielle (13, 11 and three, respectively). All are graduates of Jewish day schools. I knew that their Dachau experience would be consciously and unconsciously indelibly etched in their hearts and minds. To this day, Alaina, Joshua and Danielle have a deep and profound Jewish identity. All three speak out vociferously against injustice.
As Jewish parents, we should not shield our children from the horrors and tragedies of the Shoah. We are now experiencing a rise in antisemitism in our schools, on campuses and throughout society. In recent years, we’ve seen the Tree of Life synagogue massacre and other deadly attacks targeting Jews.
To be sure, the third Dachau visit, in August 2022, was the most impactful and incisive of all three visits. Why? I explored the camp alone, not speaking, not talking to anyone. This solitude allowed me to hear the cries. I envisioned the shootings at the wall and the transport and burning of the bodies to the Grosses Krematorium (large crematorium).
I had traveled to Germany alone. I initially visited museums and davened (prayed) with the Chabad in Frankfurt and Munich. I proudly donned tefillin in the Metropolitan Hotel lobby near the Frankfurt station.
In Germany I was graciously invited for Shabbat at Rabbi Mindi’s home, where I met Ukrainian Jewish refugees. How ironic, sad and puzzling to know of a 91-year-old Ukrainian woman who fled Germany during World War II to Ukraine, now she has fled Ukraine to Germany! The Chabad rabbis in Germany are instrumental in aiding the escape of Ukrainian Jews.
Following the welcoming by Chabad, I fulfilled my intent of my European trip: a third visit to Dachau. I was on the train with Germans that were going to work; but I was on the same train to the death camp. Only 30 minutes from my hotel in Munich.
I was stunned that the camp was now commercialized. Tourists are given brochures and audio tape options. There is a tourist buffet restaurant, with sausage, potatoes and sauerkraut. I dismissed the distracting commercializing and went directly through the wrought iron gate, “Arbeit macht frei,” Work sets you free. Did the prisoners believe that lie?
For five lonely but profoundly pensive and introspective hours, I solemnly meandered through the entire camp.
I transpose myself to the early 1940s. I envisioned arriving in cattle boxcars and being herded to the “showers.” I projected myself deathly on the shelves of one of the 32 barracks. I stood next to SS watchtowers envisioning escaping prisoners who were fired upon.
Besides the barracks, crematoria, and shooting range, there is a museum, with nearly a thousand photos depicting the German physicians performing “medical experiments” on prisoners. Where is humanity? How does one still believe in God? Does the state of Israel justify the Shoah?
As the Allied units approached Dachau, in 1945, at least 25,000 prisoners were force marched south or transported away in freight trains. Thousands died of starvation, disease, hypothermia or exhaustion.
I share this profound experience in hopes of influencing others to visit a concentration camp, alone or with others. When you visit the site where the atrocities and horror of Dachau, Auschwitz and Theresienstadt transpired, you believe that antisemitism can expand and explode again. We must thwart the momentum of Jew hatred now. Never again!
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Dr. Michael Appleman has been married to Mickey for 40 years. They have three children, Alaina (Aaron), Joshua (Negin) and Danielle, and two grandchildren. Michael is a graduate of Torah Academy and Talmud Torah. He is the CEO of Cubano Gallery, having completed over 40 humanitarian missions for Cuban Jewry. He may be contacted at: appleman. michael@gmail.com.
(American Jewish World , April 2023)
