Editor's Column
by Mike Richeson
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Iraqis can finally proclaim
'Never Again'
One more step and I was a dead man. Just a 10-yard strip of grass stood between me and the fence. The guards gripped their guns, hoping I would take that one step. They didn't need a reason to kill me; Lord knows they killed for fun most of the time. But killing a disobedient man brought them even more joy.
Snap out of it.
I was standing inside the Dachau concentration camp in southern Germany, on a bright, sunny day in 1996, not the early 1940s. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling I was caught in another time. My high school exchange class had left me behind, following the tour guide hurrying us along, but I could not make myself move.
What must life have been like, living so close to death every moment of every day? One step off the gravel work road and onto the grass meant death; the Germans forbade the Jews to touch the grass. Imagine how torturing existence must have been, dressed in gray rags, surrounded by dust and ash, commanded by monsters in colorless uniforms. But there, just feet away, grew fresh green grass. The horrors to see at Dachau were endless: Rough, splintered bunks no wider than most twin-sized mattresses stood against the walls. The Nazis provided one toilet for every 500 prisoners. Sometimes the captives had running water.
The gas chambers with low, 7-foot ceilings squatted ominously close to the imprisoned workers, a constant reminder to those growing too weak to work. Everyone knew what happened if a smiling guard offered you a hot shower.
The furnace towers dominated the grounds like Nazi sentinels, connected to the oven rooms where murdered victims were first hung on meat hooks and then cremated. All day the stacks belched ash and smoke that choked the working prisoners.
I remember framed pictures the size of garage doors in the headquarters-turned-museum. The black-and-white photographs showed bodies and shoes stacked two stories high, evidence of the glaring evil that had befallen the world. Family members who had lost loved ones in this killer camp openly wept and fell to their knees at the sight. The agony of Dachau continues almost 60 years after the camp's liberation.
I remember the pillars erected to represent every nationality of people that had been killed at Dachau. The numbers were staggering: more than 200,000 people killed from dozens of different countries.
I remember the massive metal sculpture of tangled, emaciated bodies at Dachau's entrance and the sign that reads "Nie Wieder" -- never again.
Those who experienced World War II quickly are becoming extinct, and the Holocaust slowly is becoming a bad dream that might have happened. My great-uncle who recently died was part of a U.S. Army hospital unit that tried to save many of the starving prisoners in a concentration camp. After seeing the gruesome camp, he said he was never hungry again.
Now in 2004, many years after the world declared "Never again," coalition forces are uncovering the mass graves and torture facilities--the tip of Saddam Hussein's reign of horror--in Iraq. As the United States gathers intelligence (which I hope will be more reliable than the information acquired prior to the war) and testimonials from Iraqi victims, the rest of the bloody iceberg will be revealed.
Decades from now, families still will be crawling out from under the grief Saddam Hussein brutally thrust upon them. But at least they will have a chance.
Thanks to the effort of tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers and the ultimate sacrifice of more than 500 young men and women, the Iraqis have the opportunity to build their own memorials and hang signs that read "Never again."
At last, the whims of a brutal dictator and his insane sons will not cause the torture, rape, murder or imprisonment of people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
As we approach the one-year anniversary of the war in Iraq, please take time to thank those who serve so dutifully and put themselves in harm's way. Without people like them, few would ever have the chance to say, "Never again."
In light of their courage, maybe we can help others living in fear of tyrants to say, "Not anymore."
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