Visitors approach Dachau on foot. When I saw the guard tower in front of me, between two rows of barbed wire, I shivered. I felt my knees getting weak and I had to slow down. This was not a movie. This was the real thing, where everything happened to real people, by real people.
Visitors walk around the camp in silence. You just hear their steps on the pebbles of the main camp road. There used to be rows of prisoner barracks on both sides of this road. All but one have been taken down. It feels like we are walking among huge tombs.Ten years before, in 1993, I had entered my city´s synagogue for the first time with my father, to attend a memorial service for the victims of the holocaust. Of the 1.950 Jews living there in 1941, 1.870 were deported. During the service, a lady sitting next to me started crying. I realised history was there, next to me.
I feel particularly attracted to the history and culture of jewish people. I love their language and their music. I respect them for keeping their traditions. I loved Richard Zimler´s The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon and Noah Gordon´s The Last Jew. It was a big emotion for me visiting Jerusalem, Toledo, the Holocaust exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, the Jewish Museum in Copenhagen, the Dachau Museum - that had just reopened when I visited and is one of the best-, Lisbon´s Synagogue, more recently the Anne Frank Museum and Jewish Museum in Amsterdam. Last year I finally visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. They are particularly involved in raising awareness regarding the prevention of genocide. At the time of my visit, they had a temporary exhibition on Darfur. Next time it might be on Palestine.
Yedid nefesh means "beloved of my soul"
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