Years ago we visited Dachau on a cold,rainy,dreary day.It was fitting that the weather was like that because Dachau is the most depressing place I’ve ever visited.
No question about that. I visited Dachau in the 60s as a young soldier. Whenever I see it pictured on TV or Internet, I get cold chills. A truly horrifying place.
It was so horrifying that I felt it could not be reality. It was a nightmare. I still cannot get my mind around it.
So horrifying and so unbelievable was the nightmare, that I had difficulty with reality and actually teetered on the edge of psychosis.
As I stared out of the window of the sleeping quarters into the yard, I was afraid to turn around. The nightmare was so surreal that I feared to see starving inmates, of which I was one, that my happy life was a hallucinatory daydream, and that the reality was that I was trapped in the horrors of Dachau.
My life has never been the same.
That was about 25 years after the liberation of Dachau. After all these years, I still tremble as I think about it.
When I was there, it was also cold, rainy and dreary. So many of us were openly weeping as we went from room to room. I will never forget the experience.