Dachau was the first concentration camp opened in Germany during the Nazi’s power. It was first intended to hold political dissidents but exponentially grew to additionally imprison, jews, homosexuals, war prisoners, disabled people, nationals from the occupied territories etc
The visit to the concentration camp of Dachau was an overwhelming and awakening experience. To see first-hand a place that had been a horrendous nightmare for hundreds of thousands of people; to feel the unrehearsed silence of respect and empathy by the visitors… it’s a sensation I will never forget. Learning about the rise of nazism and Adolf Hitler to power was an invaluable educative experience that served as a cautionary tale for future generations to come. Reading about the part the media and the international community played in the disguise of such heinous crimes against humanity hopelessly engulfed me in a deep fog of fear.
While the experience was mentally overwhelming I can’t overstate how significant it was. It helped me understand that we can never take for granted our democracy. Democracy should be nourished and strengthened with every generation. Preventing these type of horrors from ever happening again is an obligation of not only our governments but also each and everyone of us as an individual that values freedom and equality. Learning about the dark side of human history and understanding how and why it happened is therefore instrumental to avoid its repetition.
Just like a house needs to be upkeeped and fixed as time goes by, so does our democratic system. We must efficiently fix the cracks bound to appear in our democracy so as the system our ancestors created never collapses.
Neither my Spanish or English vocabulary seems sufficient to describe what is felt in Dachau. To feel the horrors humans are capable of committing, the ways in which the media can shape people’s reality and perception, to understand how much uniformity fosters hate, fear and prejudice, to learn about the sickeningly scary tactics leaders can use to pit minorities against each other, to empathize with the victims of such atrocities and realize the incredibly stoic mental strength of the survivors… The experience of Dachau is an anchor that I will forever carry inside of me. An anchor that will help me stop and put situations into perspective.
In my opinion, experiencing Dachau is something that every young person should go through. Our current rights and responsibilities can only be fully understood if we learn about the history that brought us to the present. It is of the utmost importance that our historical knowledge is preserved for every new generation to come, so we and future generations can learn from it.
From Dachau I take a lot, but above all I want to point out first; how important it is to speak up against any kind of extremism before its too late, because Hitler and nazism didn’t appear over night. Nazism was born among fear, hate, nationalism and a lack of faith in the establishment of that era and a desire for a radical change. Lastly, we can’t afford to take for granted our democracy. To value our achievements as a society and how far we’ve come and to understand that the road is not over and is not indestructible. We can never forget, because forgetting is the first step to resurgence.