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I took a train today, which was followed by a short bus ride. I walked in the rain with a borrowed umbrella and passed through this cold iron gate. I tried to imagine what it must have been like when it was locked and constantly surveilled by guards. Today, it swings open with ease for people like me to walk in and tread lightly among the countless ghosts of some of the most intense and senseless suffering mankind has ever known.
The magnitude of it all could not ever leave the haunted, overgrown earth. It's in the stones underfoot, on stained walls, and in the growth rings of the moss-covered poplar trees. They never made it out of here.
We make a solemn pilgrimage to spectate and take pictures, and then we get to go back home. We quietly go about the rest of our lives. I try to make sense of it, but I cannot. I listen to casual and friendly chatter from tourists on a heated bus back through Dachau.

1933-1945