Germany 6 - something that will live with us for the rest of our lives

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Woke up to our last day in the Czech Republic. Showered, emptied the water and filled up ready for the road ahead. Once all the days jobs were done headed to reception to pay the bill. 1003 crowns for two nights stay plus the 240 crowns for the washer and drier. I bought six rolls for the journey as the fridge is starting to look bare and without any more Crowns we were not going to be able to top up Mother Hubbards Cupboard until we reached Euroland again.

The rain fell as it always does as we backtracked towards Munchen. Our original plan was to go from the Czech Republic to Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest however as always the plans change. It is never much fun going over the same ground and this is one of the reasons we purchased Suzy so that we would hopefully not have to travel the same road twice. Before we knew it we were in the land of racing drivers again all sailing past us with impunity as if they were in an infernal hurry to outrun the devil who was chasing them. Our plan was to camp up near Munich tonight and tomorrow do the harrowing tour of Dachau concentration camp. Not everyones cup of tea and not somewhere that would have the same appeal as chateau, castle or museum. But it has to be done. Along the way we saw field after field of hops evidence of the brewing industry of the region. OK what’s the connection between the German brewing industry and my birth town of Wrexham in North Wales. It was home to the German brewer who settled in the town, found the water ideal for brewing and set up the Wrexham Lager Beer company which I believe was the first lager beer to be brewed in Britain. Taken over by Skol it eventually closed despite being on the tables of ex pats and ministers all over the British Empire.

I suppose war has come to mind very much this year for us in Britain. Two things happened a hundred years ago. My dad was born and it was the outbreak of the First World War. Many commemorations have taken place locally and in France and there have been a great variety of programmes about the Great War on TV. The second World War was always interesting to us as we were lucky enough not have to lived through it but our parents fought in it. My dad in the campaign against the Japanese in Burma, Glenns father in the Marines fighting in Italy and Egypt. His mother working in the munitions factories at Lutterworth and mine in the local ones in Wrexham. We studied bits of it in school and we always seem to come face to face to one war or the other whilst on our travels. Seeing it was going to be a strange experience.

Dacau concentration camp seemed impossible to find as if it was hiding its head in shame. We had programmed Sally Sat Nav to find us the parking site but she took us off the main drag and into the heart of a mixed industrial/residential park. Not a sign of the camp here and the parking was purely for buses and office/factory workers. So it was on the road again. This time putting in the address for the site. Not knowing a number we had to guess 1 and she took us back where we had come from. On our way I thought that I had seen a gate hidden away in the trees. Cars seemed to be parking and I guessed it might be the camp so round we turned which is not easy sometimes in Suzy and headed back. Just out of the corner of my eye in a bunch of signs was a tiny one which pointed to the gateway and showed us eventually where to go. We were greeted by a gentleman who took our 5 euros parking fee and showed us where to park . Once parked we joined the procession of visitors who were either arriving to pay their respects or just leaving having done so.

A sombre place. Quiet as the grave. Not even the sound of birds. I had read many times that concentration camps give that feeling and it was certainly true. Even with all the visitors the silence was deafening. As if people were afraid to speak. We did not want to do the guided tour and opted for the free visit where we could wander round for as long or as little as we liked.

We read first and saw the paths that the Jews used to walk into the camp from the railway station which was 30 minutes away and saw the high perimeter fence with its dry moat and sentry towers stretching all round the camp. We entered through the black metal heavy gateway which proudly proclaimed Work sets you free ……………….. Words that chilled you through to the marrow. Under the barracks for the SS and into the huge parade ground where roll call would take place. A vast empty space quiet now and hard to imagine so many of humankind being brought into it and paraded, devoid of any privacy just giving their names to their captors. A museum had been housed in the barrack blocks. The pyjama like uniforms that we are so familiar with were hung up, metal plates, cups and spoons belonging to the prisoners, their prized possessions, Bibles and other books. The story of the camp was told in panels which started with its origins and took us right up to the story of the end of the war with liberation. The panels spared no detail telling the story and included all the gory and inhuman things that went on throughout the war. Reading the panels we felt our hair standing on end, we felt disgust, we felt sick and went through a whole gambit of emotions. The feel of a cold hand on our skin as we failed to understand just how these things could have been allowed to happen. Experiments on the prisoners to see how long they would survive in the cold. The list was endless and the atrocities beggared belief. Reading about them is one thing, seeing it another. As you walked we felt that surely not everyone condoned the acts and surely someone must have felt the wrongness of it all.

Outside were the imprints of the concrete footings for the sleeping accommodation blocks. All were destroyed after the war and all that remains are 30 long concrete shapes outlining the buildings. One has been reconstructed and inside we saw row after row of small and cramped sleeping cots filling the rooms. Two and three deep and two high. It must have been cramped and inhuman living in them. All dignity stripped. Two washing fountains where the prisoners must have lined up for a cold wash and two rows of brown porcelain urinals. No privacy for that most private of functions.

Beyond this area were the most evocative parts of the complex. The old bunker containing the first crematorium. A small building capable of disposing – this is the only word we could think of as it felt as if the Nazi’s were disposing of worthless carcasses – three bodies in one incineration. This became too slow as the numbers coming into and dying in the camp increased. A bigger facility was needed and the new block went up. A bigger brick building with huge chimney in the middle. At first you wouldn’t be able to second guess what it was and we went in the wrong way round. Starting at the end we worked backwards and had to imagine the process the right way round. The prisoners were brought into the first room, small and where there must have been a desk. Officers and staff would have smiled at the prisoners , taken their details and told them that they were going for a shower. We felt cold thinking about it as we read the stark details on the wall which told the process simply and without any feeling. To the next room where the prisoners probably were stripped. We could see the sign above the door which in German perhaps said bathhouse. The doors to the shower room/gas chamber were metal and thick and we both felt sure some waiting to go in would have wondered why such heavy doors were needed on a shower. It did not take much imagine to feel that something sinister was about to happen. They may have considered why the room needed shutting off and how dark it would become inside. They were reassured that it was a shower by being shown the shower heads, still there and rusting in the ceiling. Other vents in the wall though hid the dark secret . 150 human beings could be crammed into that small room, the door closed, the gas administered and the end result 150 corpses were ready to be moved on to the next even more chilling room.

By this time we felt a touch sick at the thought of the disregard for human life as the guards must have bundled up three corpses at a time and put them in the crematoria. Four crematoria must have been burning all day and night every day and night. For some odd reason the place smelt of death, we noticed it heavy in the air, as if there was still ash floating round in the ether.

Was the trip worth it? Some might say macabre, dwelling on such destruction and death. Even the hardest individual could not fail to be moved by such a place. We felt close to tears as we pondered just how one individual could do such an atrocity to another in the name of progress and a belief in a master race. No-one deserves this and it shouldn’t be happening now. It was a lesson. One that seems to have failed to be learned all these years later.

We have had similar but not so strong feelings when we have stood in Orador sur Glane the town destroyed by the Nazi’s and the entire population martyred, when we have stood on a war memorial in Italy for thousands of war dead and in every Commonwealth War Cemetery in France and Belgium but this . Words fail.



Work makes you free – what a shame that the Nazi’s had not allowed all the people massacred the right to work and gain freedom at the end of the war. Instead they left us places like Dachau to remind us of something vile and inhuman.



I didnt know whether it was appropriate to put on this blog and the photographs but it felt crass not to do so. The visit left its mark on both of us. The pictures are what we saw. They are not pretty but they are a reminder of what was so wrong with this world at that time. It happened and it must never happen again.

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