(August 4, 2009)

.

And so our day began...

Walking where so many weary had once ridden - through miles of tree-lined footpaths instead of rails and boxcars, overflowing with forsaken humanity amidst the scent of wildflowers beneath a canopy of birch and pine trying to draw us away from those ancient smells of sweat and fear and death.

Where our journey-path ended, the never-forgotten nightmare once began.  Past river and fence and ditch and barbed wire, we entered the place of sorrows -- a city within a city, yet unlike any city ever known -- a city once filled with the souls of the doomed: degraded, used and abused.

Hope was stripped here. Dignity was stolen here. The breath of life was extinguished here.  So many died in pain and suffering and agony here.

This is Dachau.

*The pictures and text were a recent entry in my travel journal while in Germany-- Chris