Days of Remembrance: Local group 'stands where they stood'

By Christine June (USAG Kaiserslautern Public Affairs)May 6, 2009

Days of Remembrance
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Sgt. 1st Class Eric Healey, from the U.S. Army Garrison Kaiserslautern Directorate of Emergency Services, walks through the front gate April 28 at the Concentration Camp Memorial Site in Dachau. The words above the iron-gate ... (Photo Credit: U.S. Army)
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KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany -- Imagining what it must have been like weighed heavy on some of the 39 Soldiers, civilians and family members who visited the Concentration Camp Memorial Site at Dachau April 28, a day before and 64 years after it was liberated by American forces.

"You can always read about (the Holocaust) or watch it on TV, but to actually be there - standing where they stood - it's just such a unique experience," said Sgt. 1st Class James Ligons, U.S. Army Garrison Kaiserslautern Equal Opportunity advisor.

Opened in March 1933, Dachau was the first Nazi German concentration camp in Germany, located near the medieval town of Dachau, 10 miles northwest of Munich. Information provided at the camp's museum stated that more than 200,000 prisoners from more than 30 countries were housed in Dachau, and it is believed that 25,613 died in the camp and almost another 10,000 in its sub-camps.

That's exactly why, said Ligons, he wanted to sponsor a bus trip for Army units in the Kaiserslautern military community to Dachau instead of hosting an event on base for the Days of Remembrance, an annual commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust, observed in late April.

"No guest speaker can cover it like actually being here - seeing the place for what it is - a place of death," said Justin Wiese, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, who was visiting the memorial for the first time.

"Hurts the soul - it really does - the needless death and slaughter," said Justin's wife, Sgt. Angela Wiese, the garrison's Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment supply sergeant, who was also experiencing her first visit to the camp. "You can still feel the anger and hostility resounding in this place."

Right from the start, the Wieses tried to read all the poster boards hanging in the maintenance building that document the camp's history and prisoners' lives, blended with the history of the Nazi regime. And, they spent some time looking at all of the glass display cases, especially the ones housing photos and documents belonging to the camp's prisoners.

"Stats - photos - all this information - so many posters - so many people died," said Justin, who also listened with his wife to the English self-guided audio tour that includes in-depth explanations of the camp's layout and adding to the written accounts hanging from the ceiling, creating a maze of history.

But, time was running out as the observance tour had less than two hours - the drive there took twice as long - to see the whole camp.

Across the courtyard - where the museum's sometimes-graphic poster boards showed summary execution of prisoners took place, the Wieses walked along the ditches in front of the fences, still wrapped in barbed wire and further unsettling with iron stakes and a wall with seven guard towers.

They met up with two other garrison Soldiers - Sgt. 1st Class Eric Healey, from the Directorate of Emergency Services and Sgt. Robert Figueroa, from the Chaplain's Office, while touring the one fully restored barracks - complete with triple prisoner bunks, bathroom facilities and washroom, lockers, tables and chairs.

"Can't imagine sleeping on that," said Figueroa, after he studied several of the prisoners' triple bunk beds for a few silent seconds.

"It says here they slept on straw over these board flats," said Healey, referring to the audio guide.

Upon liberation - again from one of the museum's poster boards - Americans found about 32,000 prisoners, crammed 1,600 to each of the 20 barracks, which had been designed to house 250 people each. It further states that Dachau's camp area consisted of 32 barracks including one reserved for medical experiments.

In back of the restored living quarters are rows of 17 barracks' foundations - each with numbered markers and arranged with stones to show the original dimensions. These rows eventually lead to the crematorium.

History plastered on these poster boards records that Dachau - its organization and camp layout - was the prototype and model for the other Nazi concentration camps that followed.

"Awfully big," said Angela, as she walked in the pathway between the rows and rows, on both sides, of these "ghost" barracks. At first she thought these organized piles of stones were mass graves, until she referred back to her audio guide.

Here, the husband and wife went their separate ways. She checked out the Jewish, Jehovah Witnesses and Catholic religious sites and visited the covenant on the far side of the camp. He went to the crematorium - disinfection rooms, ovens and gas chamber.

"Humbling," he tells his wife about the experience. "Especially when I walked into 'the showers' (gas chambers)."

On the way to Dachau, Ligons showed two films - "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" and a French documentary titled "Night and Fog."

Both movies showed how camp prisoners were told they were going to take a shower, when, in fact, they were in the gas chamber. Those movie scenes, said Justin, ran through his mind as he walked into the gas chamber.

"It's hard to imagine being here - then," he said.

"Hurts the soul," repeated Angela, as they walked back through the camp's iron gate marked with the words "arbeit macht frei" - "work will set you free" - to get back on the bus for the more than four-hour ride back home.

(Editor's Note: Christine June writes for the USAG Baden-WAfA1/4rttemberg newspaper, the Herald Post.)