Dachau

I forgot to do the best and worst of Munich. BEST: The lighthearted atmosphere WORST: The prices!!! Too many €€€!!
OK on to Dachau...we spent half a day here. It was the first concentration camp ever constructed and served as a model for the rest of the camps. What can be said about this place? It is terribly hanting. I cannot say it was a great expereince, but it is something I think everyone should see. The gate the prisoners walked through states "Work will set you free" There is the large open space where the roll call was held every morning, there were abotu 35 bunks they lived in in terrible conditions, but these were torn down after liberation. They rebuilt a few to show how they would look. Dachau mainly housed political prisoners and Cathoilc priests. While it was not a death camp like Auschwitz, the primary function was for labor so many people worked to death. Around 40,000 people died here. There was a building used for manufacturing tools and this place has been turned into a museum where you can read about what happend at Dachau and watch a short film. Behind this building is another buliding, this one was where the experiements and torture were carried out. There is a hanging pole, an execution wall and inside are cells where the prisoners could stand only, it is terrible. this place was left intact and was occupied for a short time by the US military at the end of the war, but they didnt touch anything. The cells are terribly dark small and cold. They had some picturse and documents about the terrible experiments that were performed here. Dachau was a large training base for the SS. The building is used by the German government today, but it is not included on the concentration camp tour. Some of the grounds had to be recreated becasue in the anger and sadness that followed the war much of it was torn down (mainly just the bunkers). There was a section of land outside of the camp where the crematorim was. Although Dachau had a gas chamber constructed towards the end of the war, it was never used. They did expand their crematorium through the war and were able to burn about 20 bodies at once. Sometimes they would jsut hang people above the entrance to the oven so it could be done quickly. At the end of the war, the coal had run out and the bodies were just piled in massive piles around the crematorium. The American soliders saw this and before they did anything they brought the people of the city of Dachau to come niside and bear witness to what had happened. The citiyens of the city had been lead to belive this was more or less and reform type camp, where the prisoners had been learning how to behave better or something. Tehn the soldiers had to dig two mass graves, each holding about 1,500 bodies. These graves lie in a peaceful area just behind the crematorium, in addition there are more execution walls in this grassy area as well as graves for the ashes from the crematorium. We had an audio guided tour so we knew what was going on most of the time, and we got through everything but we stayed until close and you really could have erad everything it would have taken an entire day. It was a terrible testimony to what happened during the Holocaust. It is strange to think it happend not long ago. It puts you in an incredibly somber mood, you really dont know quite how to act after that experience. I am so glad we did it though and so glad that Germany has taken so many steps to showcase the horrors as a way to make up for what happened, rather than destory the camps in an attempt to cover up mistakes made by Hitler. It is illegal to read Mein Kampf, and if you get drunk and feel like saying heil hitler to a cop, you will get clubbed and taken to jail. The people are still a bit sensitive about the whole thign and are aware that the world has a certain perception of them still becasue of all that happened.