Dachau

I woke upe today to a bird seemingly trying to get into the window. Through the curtain, which was partially translucent in the early morning light, I could see its flapping fluttering wings and hear their thap thap thap against the pane. It was staying at the top border of the window as if trying to acheive some hard to reach perch. It was a small bird, its unnerving thap thap thap persevering for ten maybe fifteen minutes as I lay in bed working up the gumption to rise up to the day. I was reminded of how the Irish say that if a live bird is in your house after someone you know has passed, it means that the person's soul is free, though if a dead bird is found in your house, the person's soul is restless. Finally the bird gave up its futile struggle and I was safe to wake up fully without the haunting presence thap thap thapping against the window.

I went to Dachau today, about 20 minutes by train out of Munich. It was probably the most frigid day I have had on my travels thus far, about -5 centigrade, and I spent most of it walking around outside. Dachau was the first of Hitler's concentration camps and the only one to function for all twelve years during the war. The ground was so cold that even through my boots and two pairs of socks, one wool, my toes still started to go numb. Just a microscopic taste of standing for at the very minimum an hour for role call every morning, no matter the weather, just in your measly prison garb. There was a small creek flowing down the side of the barracks yards that you cross a bridge over to get to the crematoriums and gas chambers, running parallel to the long barbwire fence. Standing on the bridge and looking at the water recede into the distance, bare and brittle winter branches on either side of the creek sometimes leaning over into the water, a grey column of light at the horizon's end of this stark corridor. Three strands of barbwire hovered about a meter above the water in the near distance, a patch of vibrant green in the water in the foreground. This is the image that struck me most at Dachau. I do not know why, perhaps I saw it as a bleak but somehow also hopeful vision of the future. An ambiguous beauty to it, just on the border of a concentration camp.

It was difficult to really absorb any real concrete feeling from the camp memorial site with all the tourists taking picture of every little thing, not really seeing it with their eyes, just recording it as proof they have been there, seemingly. Even with headphones on to try to block them out, try and create my own little world (though I did discover the perfect concentration camp visiting mucic: Max Richter's Memoryhouse) did little good. I feel like with hallowed ground such as that and other sacred sites, where respect is due, it is best to experience it all by yourself. To get a real sense of solitude with the site, to establish a connection with what has happened there, without having to endure people, their flashes going off, navigating through their ranks, etc. It just felt a little like a weird spectacle of suffering with all of the hubbub going on. I know this is impossible, experiencing it by oneself at any rate, though. Anyway, I would feel pretty weird sneaking into a concentration camp at night to try to establish a more enriched connection.