In order to understand better the Jews in the DP camps I went to Dachau to visit the concentration camp there. It was, as yet, not cleaned up except that the corpses found there by the liberating American troops had been removed and buried. The barbed wire surrounded the camp.
I went in through the main entrance to a nearby building larger than the others. The first room I entered had clothing hooks on the walls and a sign that read in German, “Undress here. Hang your clothes on a hook and remember where you have placed them so that you will find your clothes easily after the shower.” Near the end of the long room was a door with the words on it, “Shower Room.” I opened the door, stepped into the “Shower Room,” looked up and saw the opening through which the Zyklon-B gas came into the room. The inside of the door through which I came caught my eye. It was completely covered with thousands of scratches. Why these scratches, I wondered, and then it came to me. These scratches were made by who knows how many hands clawing at the door to get out, once the gas began to choke the unfortunates inside.
With a shudder I walked out of the gas chamber through the door on the opposite wall. I found myself in a large room with three sizeable furnaces on the left. I opened the mouth of one of them to see where the bodies of countless Jews, taken from the gas chamber, had been dumped- empty now, of course, but with a white ash on the bottom. On the far wall were many filled sacks. My curiosity aroused, I walked over to see what was in the sacks. I opened one and saw the white ash filling the sack. On the front of each sack was the German word for “Fertilizer.” I recoiled in anger. The ash, all that was left of countless Jewish men, women, children and infants, was now fertilizer, to be used to enrich the soil of German farms. I plunged my arm into the white ash up to my elbow and rubbed the ash into the palm of my hand so that I would never forget what my eyes had seen at Dachau!
Extremely intersing.
Denis Brian