visit to a place that doesn't exist

When I went to Dachau, I didn’t feel much of anything. The experience was purely intellectual – and even that required striving. I felt more vividly about Dachau when I was reading about Dachau, when I looked at photographs of it, when I conjured that apocalypse, working myself into the place with imagination and the memory of all I’d learned. The reality was a failure. There is no Dachau anymore; it’s just tidy rows of sterile geometry, all swept up. No need to leave the small museum. I know that there being no Dachau should be a good thing, but there really is no Dachau. None at all. When I went to Dachau, I didn’t feel much of anything. When I went to Dachau, mostly I was waiting to go home.