Robert Hogan stepped out of the bus, into the fresh winter air. It was December 1970. Here in Germany, temperature was already below freezing and he put up the collar of his jacket against the icy wind.
He had come here today on a last, mission if it could be called this. It was more a personal reason. Twenty five years after the war ended, he had come here, to encounter the last and most horrible part of his face off with the past.
He glanced into the town. Snow covered the rooftops and the streets were covered with a dust of snowflakes. The winter sun was reflected in all its colours. So peaceful was this town, yet its name would forever be linked to what could be considered one of the most wide ranging crimes against humanity. Robert Hogan was here, in the middle of the winter, in the small, peaceful village of Dachau.
In complete silence, he stepped into the camp compound. It looked like Stalag 13, yet the atmosphere was different. The barbed wire, the guard towers were leaning hostile toward the Barracks, rebuilt after the war to become a memorial.
Yes, the atmosphere was hostile, fearful, still. And Robert Hogan knew, what set this camp apart from his own camp, people had been murdered here, tortured, frightened beyond reason.
Hogan shook his head. He could not understand how people, ordinary people like himself could have comitted these crimes against humanity. He would never understand.
Bitterly he read the words embedded in the iron of the entrance gate. "Arbeit macht Frei". He shook his head again. Labour of the kind the people here were forced to do, would definitely not set them free.
He walked slowly towards the bunker, deep inside him, he wanted to run from this place, he knew already what he would find here, he had already seen too much.
The cells were empty, all of them, yet behind every wall a Gestapo man seemed to hide, ready to grab him and lock him up, the hooror would begin anew.
That´s why you had to come here. You have to see what has become of Germany, it is a different country, now.
He turned away from the empty building. The emptyness was more frightening than screaming could ever be. Silence, emptyness. This bulding had never been empty, the SS had cared for that. Helpless, Hogan leaned against the wall, seeing the images again, shown to him shortly after his arrival in London. It was then, that the whole cruelty of Hitlers Third Reich became clear to him.
He had often heard rumours, but like so many other people, he could not, would not, would never believe them, because his mind blocked the images, screamed that this was never true.
Here, in the cold, grey bunker of Dachau, the feeling of helplessness, the feeling of dreadful emptyness was there again. Could he have done something?
He exited the building and walked over the camp compound, towards the chapel. To his left and right were only grey rectangles were left, filled with gravel. They marked the foundations of what once was the only protection for the prisoners against the cold winters here in the south of Germany.
In the chapel, Hogan lit a candle, a candle for those, who could not be here with him today, a candle for those, who would never be here with him again and a candle for all those children, who could now live in freedom.
He stared out of the window towards the snow covered Barracks, with the background of the small town. Had the people known what happened here? What had they done?
He shook his head. Nothing, they had not done anything and, what scared him more than this fact was, that in this moment, he was not sure what he would have done.
I have done things, which everyone deemed impossible, yet I cannot even trust myself. What would I have done? Would I have been a Schultz, seeing nothing, knowing nothing? Or would I have been like the "Weiße Rose"? It is so easy to say afterwards that you would have been brave, yet we have seen, there were so many Schultzes, so little white roses.
Hogan turned around and looked right into our faces, the faces of those, who are reading this story right now, and gestured towards the camp compound.
"Would you have let this happen? I ask you, honestly and don´t say no to quickly. It is always easy to judge us, who lived before, yet can you judge those, who live among you, can you judge yourself? What would you have done?".