Munich Part 2

I stopped writing Munich part 1 to post A Good Cause, because it is more important. Also, Munich Part 2 is a bit more solemn than the rest of the trip.

I left off on Saturday afternoon; after we received our free hugs we hopped onto a train to Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial. Dachau is only a 15 minute train ride from the center of the city. I knew going to a concentration camp would be difficult, but nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to see.

I got off the bus ready to document my trip with pictures. As soon as I walked through the gate that reads: ARBEIT MACH FREI (Work Makes You Free), I choked up. Kristin and I walked in silence as we listened to the personal accounts from survivors on our headsets. I shot 8 photos and couldn't bring myself to take anymore. I don't need photo's to remember what I felt and saw that day. We walked around solemnly, sitting occasionally and just trying to take in all of the horror that happened in this place.

The gates that each prisoner had to walk through to enter the concentration camp.

Dachau was the first concentration camp in Germany, formed in 1933 and became the model for all other Nazi concentration camps. It was also used as a training camp for SS soldiers. The camp is divided into 2 parts: the camp area and the crematorium. The camp area included 32 barracks; 30 for the prisoners, 1 for clergymen, and 1 for medical experiments. In front of the barracks there is a large roll call field where they would make the prisoners stand for hours naked and humiliated. I could not imagine the cold and humiliation, standing naked in such a hopeless place. I did not feel warmer after thinking about this, but I did feel ashamed and ungrateful.


There are now just 2 barracks that have been reconstructed showing the progression of life inside the barracks over the years. The barracks were first made to house 250 people. When liberated on April 29, 1945 US soldiers found 1,600 people crammed into one barrack, liberating an approximate total of 32,000 prisoners.

Looking from the middle of the roll call field towards the gates.

Inside the crematorium area there are 2 crematoriums. In the building where the old crematorium is located is also a place where they sanitized clothing, and a gas chamber that they "never used." You walk in on the left side of the building where you see two huge chambers used to "sanitize clothing." Then you walk through a door where they would tell prisoners to undress and that they would be showering. The gas chamber is the next room disguised as a shower, with shower heads and all. From there you walk into a room where they would put the dead bodies to be burned in the crematorium in the next room. Prisoners were also hung in front of the ovens. On each side of the crematory room there are rooms where they would pile the bodies of the dead. Some from the shooting range, some who died in the camp area from disease, others from the gas chamber they "never used", and even more that were brought to the camp by train. As I walked through this building I felt a feeling that I cannot even begin to express in words. I had to run through the gas chamber in fear that I would vomit inside.

This is the newer crematorium in a separate building across from the original.

After touring that area we walked back past the memorials. There are four chapels for the various religions represented among the prisoners as well as a museum that we did not go through. As we began to make our way out of the camp I began to think how beautiful the weather had been in Munich only 10 miles away, yet in Dachau everything is gloomy and overcast. All of my memories are rightly in black and white. I will never be the same after visiting here and think that it is a mandatory stop for all traveling through Europe.