Dachau

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(I split today into two entries since I couldn't exactly link the two parts of my day)

I woke up this morning to a very cloudy sky - how fitting it rain the day I go to Dachau.

On the S-bahn ride to Dachau I met a girl, Sophia, traveling by herself - she’s from Taiwan, studying in Boston, doing an internship in Bohn, Germany. How epic. We talked pretty much the entire way there and made supper plans for afterwards, as it does get tiresome eating by yourself all the time. (My next entry, or previous depending how they're posted)

Dachau is remarkably close to a fair sized city, and the camp itself is gigantic. Literally as soon as the bus pulled up to the camp it started to absolutely POUR rain. We ran to get cover under the infamous gates - Arbeit macht frei (Work makes you free) and started the tour from there.

Sure, I knew a bit about Dachau (like it was a work camp, not a death camp), and about the camp system in general before going, but nothing can substitute the feeling you get while you’re in the camp.
• When you’re standing in the roll-call square.
• When you’re standing in a barrack which is not much larger than 3 classrooms, yet somehow held more than 2000 prisoners - where they slept, ate, and bathed.
• When you’re looking down at the execution wall.
• When you’re looking down the halls of the bunker, where prisoners were given the option to commit suicide rather than continue with such torture.
• When you’re walking through the “showers” which in fact were the gas chambers.
• When you’re standing in the death rooms, where body after body was stacked waiting to be incinerated.
• When you’re looking into those very cremators.

It wasn’t a pleasant visit, but it’s still something I would recommend. As horrific as the tour was, as disgusting and dark as the information is, and how creepy and bone-chilling the rooms are… I think everyone should visit a concentration camp to learn about the monstrosities that occurred.

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Comments

[Meg]

It was cloudy the day I visited Dachau, too. Did you watch the video? By the end, a lot of the room full of tourists was crying silently.

[jewel89]

No, I didn't see the video. Our guide was kind of hurrying us along, so we didn't have much time to look at the displays. I would've cried for sure with a video. I almost cried just looking at some of the displays in the gas chamber and crematorium.

[dalia taylor]

Compulsory visits
On our visit we read a letter from the camp commandant who was apologizing to the villagers because his soldiers had hunted down deers. He promised to discipline them for their behaviour - nothing about the fact that people were being exterminated. We visited thinking we would have a better undnerstanding of the attrocities committed and left just as confused. As Rosalie says, every country has a museum dedicated to teaching the public about the horrors of war and we still don't learn.