While we were spending the weekend in Munich – visiting Dachau was on my list of things to see. I knew it would be an emotional day seeing the concentration camp, but we packed the stroller with snacks and a fully charged iPad (to keep Presley entertained if we needed) and headed just 20km north of Munich to tour the camp.
Visiting Dachau is completely free, but you can rent a audio guided tour for €4 – or you can just walk around and read the placards. The visitors center (to the right of where you purchase your tour recording device) will give you a free map that helps you navigate the area if you ask for one.
Dachau was the first concentration camp that a lot of other camps ended up being modeled after. It was expanded, a second crematory was added and medical experiments took place at the camp. The camp was originally started in 1933 and was liberated in 1945. During that time approximately This view was the view that thousands of people saw as they arrived to the concentration camp. The train pulled right up here & the prisoners were marched inside. The gate has the words Albeit Macht Frei – work will make you free.
You can walk around the entire grounds, and inside the museum to see some of the original name cards, punishment tables, clothing, art, mail and tons of information about what happened in the camp. There is a film you can watch if you don’t have young children with you – we skipped this although we could have taken turns watching it.
The ‘prison’ building there were rooms that didn’t allow the individual to do anything other than just stand. In these room they were tortured, not given light, food or water for days on end. I cannot imagine walking this long hallway when it was full of people.
Across an empty courtyard was the barracks. There was one standing that you could walk through to see the living conditions, while the others were torn down and you could just see the foundation of them. There were so many, it was impossible to imagine that many people being here.
Emotionally the hardest part for me was seeing the crematory. The original small oven was blocked off and a placard by it explained that too many prisoners were dying and they couldn’t burn them fast enough so a larger crematory was built on the opposite side.
There was a gas chamber at Dachau, but it was never actually used.
Behind the crematory was were the ashes of thousands of prisoners were spread. There was also a portion along this back wall that was labeled as a shooting area. The sign said that there was a purposely made ditch so that when shot, the blood will collect in the ditch and the guards wouldn’t have to clean up a mess before putting the body in the ovens. (I was sobbing at this point). I just cannot fathom how these things could be done to another person. Overall, I am glad we went. It was a great opportunity for us to learn more about this horrible time in history. If we didn’t have Presley with us we would have definitely done the self-guided tour with audio guide to learn even more – but she liked looking at all the (appropriate) pictures & we got to answer and teach her a lot about what happened in the past. Definitely an enlightening but very somber thing to experience.
Just relooking at these pictures makes me sick. If you could visit a Concentration Camp – would you?
Nora Spaulding says
I would love to visit one if I had the chance. It would for sure make me sick and cry lots but it’s also heartbreaking but I’d love to learn more about them and the whole psychology of it. It’s a tragic, deeply sick time in history but everything builds upon itself so I have to be thankful to all the ancestors and how hard people fought. 🙁 These are great pictures of a horrible past, thank you for sharing.)
<3