The Dark side of Weimar

Have you ever been to a concentration camp? I could say “don’t” but then I would consider myself less human. It is not something that one must or must not do. It is simply something one can or cannot bear. I would suggest that if you ever find yourself in a dilemma about visiting such a site, you should not question at least the necessity to witness it. Living in the beautiful city of Weimar, in the heart of Germany, I could easily ignore Buchenwald’s reality. The concentration camp is well hidden in the woods on Ettersberg Mountain, only 20 minutes by bus from the city center. It was built in 1937 and was liberated in April 1945. In-between it was the torture place for more than 250.000 persons, 56.000 of whom perished. Numbers… You can read all you want about the horror of a place like Buchenwald, you can watch movies and documentaries, you can see statistics. But you will never feel the chill of the morning wind going under your skin, the sun not reaching the empty pathways, the silence echoing allover more powerful than anything. There is nothing more real than death itself and once you cross the gate of a concentration camp, there is no other thought in your mind. It’s cold even when the weather is relatively good, it’s dark even when it is the middle of the day, it is sad and creepy and appalling but what hearts most is that it is also real. We know about the holocaust, we have discussed about it, but no prior information can ever make you ready enough for this experience. I do not a have a strong stomach, neither am I too emotional. I am a – relatively – normal person who just can’t stand a pair of baby’s shoes being displayed as proof of human atrocity. But I did… and so should do anyone who wants to be called human.