Dachau, 1985.
A well-read but naive teenage girl visits Dachau. She’s read about the Holocaust for school, and a few survivor accounts on her own (Night by Elie Wiesel, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl), but that doesn’t prepare her for this place. It’s October and everyone is away at Oktoberfest, so the building are abandoned. She’s alone with the cold wind and the ghosts as she steps through the gate which says “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Liberates).
She doesn’t believe in ghosts, but she can’t deny the presence there. It’s not so much evil as grief. Deep, unending grief.
She stands in front of a wall displaying the fabric triangles that prisoners wore on their uniforms–red for political prisoners, green for criminals, yellow for Jews, pink for homosexuals. There are so many categories, and so many who died here. But the pink triangle stops her because her host brother is German and gay. Forty years ago, he might have been sent here.
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Yes, that Alaskan girl was me, and that moment stuck with me for years. Eventually I tried to deal with it in fiction when I wrote a one act play about a Jewish man on a train going from Auschwitz to Dachau and a man he meets on the way. They reveal and conceal secrets, both trying to connect and stay alive in this new horrible world they have been thrust into. I converted that play into a short story, and it ended up being my first published work.
I’ve published an ebook version of On the Train to share it with readers. I hope that you can feel that moment, question what you would do, and glimpse that long ago time. I’d love to hear what you think of it.
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Life defining moments.. many have them.. it’s only the few.. that recognize.. that they’ve witnessed something remarkable.. Usually that moment.. when one finally sees.. their own soul..
That’s very true, Cherei. That moment changed the course of my life–who I would become, what I would study, where I would live, what I would write about. Everything. Where would I be if I had stayed at Oktoberfest?
I will make sure and read it. My father was stationed in Germany early in the 60’s, shortly after I was born. My mother said that her trip to Dachau and later to Bergen-Belsen left a feeling of intense sadness that she has never forgotten. She and my father have traveled to many countries, but she said those sites were far and away the ones that had the most impact, keeping you in silence contemplating the horrors that most of us can’t even imagine, and that you could almost hear the whisper of the past. The closest I can compare is my visit to Checkpoint Charlie and East Berlin in 1976 – visiting the wall and the checkpoint museum was a real wakeup for this 16 year old girl.
Thanks for sharing your experiences! Some places just resonate across time. Dachau was one for me. Checkpoint Charlie another (I crossed when it was a crossing, not just a museum). For me, Berlin struck a chord.
I have read all the Hannah Vogel book, but the last one left me wondering how they all got out of Germany and even if they did. Any more of her series?
I’m starting a new piece in the series on Monday! It’s going to be set in Britain, I think in 1940 but I’m not sure. So, we’ll see where that goes!