Buchenwald

Ahh, I've been putting off writing about this because there is too much to say and there are no words to say. Today in Weimar we toured the Buchenwald concentration camp. That even sounds disrespectful to say...toured a concentration camp?? It was an eerie, unsettling feeling to set foot on the grounds. The sun was beaming, birds chirping, flowers swaying in the wind...nothing made sense. All I could imagine were the thousands of prisoners walking these very rocks, kicking up dust beneath their wooden soled shoes, pausing for a gasp of air only to look up and see... blue skies??puffy clouds?? green meadows and lush trees???

It made no sense.

All the movies, the photographs, the history books we read paint this murky picture. Everything is gray, everything looks miserable and horrible because it is indeed unspeakably horrifying.

But to step on the grounds and see...sun? It made me shutter.

Facts that made me grow more and more sick:

• The camp was built by its prisoners.
• They slept with 1-2,000 bodies in barracks that were designed to hold only 50 horses.
• Humans were stacked 12 in a row, with no more than an inch between their bodies as they slept.
• Jews were kept in the little camp which offered more brutal conditions.
• They were allowed to be beaten for any reason at any time.
• Its victims were given a colored triangle to mark their political stance, religious beliefs, homosexuality etc.
• Over 8,000 were killed in a span of 2 years
• Not to mention the thousands thereafter until the liberation in 1945
• Doctors were feared due to their medical experimentation on victims
• Some of those including experiments that would "cure" homosexual inmates through hormonal transplants.