My first visits to the camps...more back story.

(This image is of the memorial at the camp at Dachau, outside of Munich, Germany).

The Holocaust dreams of my youth had never left me, and often during migraine attacks, I would have a series of repetitive Holocaust dreams, as if my mind were trying desperately to get me to pay attention.

My first visit to former Nazi concentration or death camps had actually been while I was in college.

We were on a Choir tour in Europe, in January of my freshman year in 1985, and we toured the camp at Dachau. Still relatively ignorant of the facts of the Holocaust, I experienced a bone-wrenching sorrow the day we entered the camp.

It was snowing that day – a cold, heavy, wet snow that permeated the various layers of winter clothing and chilled me to the bone and made me identify with the victims who were exposed to the elements without the benefit of protection.

At the time, I did not understand the sensations that bombarded me, but in retrospect it is clear that on that day the victims were reaching out to tell me their stories. I also suffered a serious migraine the night after our visit to Dachau.

I would return to Dachau and to the camp at Mauthausen three years later, with similar experiences, including a repetition of the migraines. These short visits would simmer in the depths of my psyche for years before their significance would be revealed.

It was not until I was in my late 30s that I would begin to grasp the gift that I had been given, and actively seek to develop my psychic abilities.

As I began to open up to the sensations and insights, instead of suppressing or resisting them, I discovered that my psychic revelations were intense, accurate, and could not be ignored. I discovered that I had a gift of psychic sight, as well as the gift of being an empath. This mixed blessing has allowed me to feel others’ pain as if it were my own, sometimes blending the lines between the two. It has also allowed me to see what causes the pain.

How I have experience pain is the topic for a future post.

These first visits to the camps had a profound impact upon me. Unconsciously, they began to tickle my psychic side, and help these sensations to begin to unfold. It was as if a seed had been planted, germinating, just waiting for the appropriate spring air to urge it into full growth above the soil.