Memory Part 6
February 16, 2025
Memory Part 6
It was 1971 and we five young men made a list of things we wanted to experience as we backpacked across Europe. That summer we traveled all the way from northern Norway to Naples in southern Italy. Among the places we visited was Dachau, the Nazi concentration camp in Germany.
Our fathers had been involved in WWII, so we were familiar with the war brought about by Adolph Hitler and his government. It operated from 1933-1945. We were curious to see with our own eyes, a Nazi concentration camp. After all, we had heard about them from our parents, history books, and movies.
The visit to Dachau was life-transforming. We walked through the barracks, workshops, and the crematorium. There were the walls, the barbed wire, and lookout towers. We saw the wall where the firing squad executions happened and the blood trench running bedside the wall. Then there were the gas chambers that were labeled “Showers.” Though very young and having never directly experienced such horror, we all agreed that we could feel the pain in that place. It is estimated that over 40,000 people were murdered at Dachau by the Third Reich, and thousands more died of disease.
After finishing the tour around the camp, we made our way to the museum. And over a doorway were the words, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I recall to this day that those words stopped me in my tracks.
I thought to myself, “Could this ever happen again?”
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” is a quote by Spanish philosopher George Santayana (1863-1952). It appears in his 1905 book, The Life of Reason, and displayed at Dachau and other German concentration camps today. The words profoundly affected me even though I had not directly experienced the atrocities, the evil.
While walking through the concentration camp I thought to myself, “It was a long time ago since this placed was used for torture, inhumane medical procedures, slavery, and genocide.” But on my reflection, it had been only 26 years since all these things were happening there. No wonder the pain was so palpable.
Santayana wisely points out that the human condition will repeat itself unless we remember our condition because, only by remembering, will we have the opportunity to prevent the horrors we would perpetrate on one another.
Self-inquiry: Why would we think that concentration camps would not happen again?
Dear God,
May that cup pass from us. Amen
