I felt slightly ashamed of myself for visiting Dachau the day after we were at Oktoberfest.  Still, it wasn't an experience I wanted to miss out on and there was no other way to do it.  Marten came with me and it was a sombre, terrible experience for us both I think.

The Holocaust has always burnt me, and like a moth to the flame I can't help returning to it, learning more about it, only to be burnt again.  That what many considered one of the most civilised and cultured societies on earth could have descended to the state it did, that so many people could turn a blind eye or actively participate in what went on, makes me look at the people around me in a different way.  Would you have been a cruel concentration camp attendant, would you have taken a Jewish house, would you have believed the conspiracy theories it was based upon?  Would I?

I've lived in a predominantly Jewish area, been close to people whose family members suffered or were killed in the holocaust, met people who survived the camps. Though there are many other massacres of people I feel similarly heartbroken about, this one in some small ways feels more personal to me. Jewish people are not an other to me, they are people I have known or loved.

I got a lot out of the visit in the end.  I didn't know that many of the war criminals who prosecuted the Holocaust were buried here.  I knew but it wasn't really in my consciousness that the first people in the camps were left-wing opponents of the Nazi's, and that the Jewish people who came later were joined by Roma, the disabled, homosexuals and others the Nazis deemed lesser than themselves. I think we lose something of the reality of what happened in Germany when we think only Jewish people suffered and died in the camps, though they were by far the most numerous victims.

History has now made its judgements, and we have learned much about how not to proceed as a species from the counter-example of the Nazis. As generally happens when you try to take the humanity from others, you end up forfeiting your own. It is not to country, race, sexuality, religion or other group identities that we should look to for meaning. It is our conscience and the kindness of our actions. What good did we manage to do in this life, what beauty did we bring to the world? 

I have given talks about animals in factory farms or environmental destruction, and a handful of people have come. It is hard to get people to volunteer for good causes, to donate to alleviate suffering, even though I know many people don't lack either time or money. I go to protests where a handful of people walk around asking for compassion, to the bored or disdainful looks of thousands of shoppers who think that protestors are the lower form of human-being.

I then think about the throngs that greeted Hitler at Nuremberg, to hear angry, hateful, incoherent conspiracy theories, and I still fear humankind.