Today would have to be the most depressing day of the whole trip. Not because I was feeling all down in the dumps, because we went to Buchenwald concentration camp. It was the first time in my life that I had been to a place where one of the most horrifying events in history took place. It’s a different feeling than seeing it on TV. I think that seeing stuff like that on TV takes away the dreary feeling and the emotional response to seeing places like this because it removes the personal element and makes it almost seem like it’s not real. When you’re actually there the feeling that you feel walking through the same gate where so many people went through but never came out is so hard to put into words. It’s something that I personally feel is something that should be there to remind the world of what horrifying things mankind is capable of.
For me the hardest thing was going into the crematorium, because it was cold and felt empty. It smelled like ashes and when I looked into the burners there were still ashes in there.
Underneath the crematorium was the corpse cellar. That had to be the saddest room part of the whole building. When you walk into the room there is a plaque that tells you what the room was. It was where they stored the bodies before they cremated them. There were around twenty hooks in the room. The hooks made gave the room a creepy feeling. The plaque on the wall said that the SS guards had strangled over eleven-hundred people on those hooks.
When we walked into the crematorium there was a little examination area, where the SS doctors would give autopsies to some of the dead prisoners and give them fake cause of death to cover up what they were doing there. When we were walking out we went through a room that looked like a place where you would get a physical. On the other side of the wall was a little room that was right behind the measuring station with a little slit that would open up behind the prisoners and the SS would shoot them in the base of the skull.
Over all I feel that my experience at Buchenwald was one that I will never forget. I feel that everyone should try to go to one of these camps so everyone can learn from the past and prevent another event like this from taking place. Just being there was a life changing experience for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment