It Was Hard to Eat Again After That Two Hour Walk

Written by Eric

Last week I had the chance to visit Dachau Concentration Camp just outside of Munich, Germany. It is not one of those places that I "wanted" to visit but it was one that I "just had" to go if I was going to be in Germany. I don't want this post to be a downer but the images that still flow through my mind are vivid and difficult to deal with.

We spent about 2 hours walking around the camp which is being preserved so that we all can remember the atrocities human beings can perpetrate on one another. The displays, though very nicely done, were difficult to process, the posted pictures chronicling the years of the actions at the camp were gruesome and the air seemed stagnant and stale as people moved around the camp.

Toward the end of our walk we went to the crematorium, the "ovens" as they were described. The crematorium was outside the walled and barbed wire camp so that people that were being retained inside the camp would not know what was going on. I had always heard about the "gas chambers" at the camps however it is another thing to stand in the middle of one of them and realize how many lives had needlessly been taken in that particular room, how many lives had been affected by this senseless and depraved ideology.

If there is any good news from my time there it is that evil in its most horrific expression does not in the end win out. Dachau is now only a memorial, not an ongoing camp. God is faithful in wiping out human evil and, even though many innocent people may die in the process, goodness always is God's will and He has the power to make all things right in the end. It reminded me again of just how off base we can become so quickly and begin to value that which corrupts us. For me, it was an affirmation of why I seek to be a disciple of Jesus and why I want others to be the same. We must, we must be the ones to bring goodness and justice to a world in need so that no one ever has to be hurt by another human being.