Munich: Dachau - Part B - initial reactions

Arriving to the camp I didn't know what I should expect.

We had a fantastic tour guy and only six people on our tour so it was nice to be able to have such an intimate experience and be able to ask questions without worry of interrupting his speech. Often on tours you'll encounter those who really don't care that much for history and ours was an exception. To get to the camp itself we took a train about 25 minutes south of munich and I didn't realize that Dachau was actually a little town itself. What a bad name to have because the whole world assumes it with prison camp.

So from the train station we took a bus to the actual site. I think the weather described my feelings well that day. It was pretty hazy, with a little bit of wind. I just couldn't get comfortable.

We started out in front of the gates market 'arbeit macht frei' - which apparently were replicas as the originals were stolen shortly after liberation. I'd really like to know where they are now. One thing to remember is that this camp was opened I believe in 1965, by survivors and family members. Another neat thing was that at the entrance there is a way to go around the gates so that survivors of the camp would never need to walk through those gates again. Something I didn't expect was that the door was only a small door. I thought it would be a larger gate.

There also seemed to be a lot of army vets wearing their proper 'squadron A blah blah' there and they didn't look old enough to be part of the liberators and all I could think of was the pompous american attitude about 'yeah we came and kicked some nazi ass' or 'if it wasn't for us you'd be talking german.' I really can appreciate what they did and in no way do I want to downplay it. But I don't appreciate bragging about killing people. Sorry I'm just a pacifist.

It was very very open there and it's always and strange feeling when you're in a wide open space, but it was even weirder being in a wide open space where you have heard about the atrocities committed there. All you think is really? really here? It seems that dead or lifeless is a good way to describe it.

There is also a wall on the far side of the camp, and right on the other side a normal road. I feel like for myself I wouldn't want a road there. I just thought it was strange.

In general though it was so hard to wrap your mind about everything. Inside the actual museum part we ended up watching about a 20 minute movie and there was a lot of footage from when the americans came to liberate the camp. If that's how horrible conditions were when they were liberated it is so difficult to imagine conditions prior to that. In fact our tour guide said that 2000 people died even after liberation because it was so bad.

In one part of the video it showed some ladies being toured and shown a room just full of dead bodies that were supposed to be there for cremation. I was in there. I think the crematorium and gas chambers were the worst part because it was just direct murder that happened there. Like there was no waiting for someone to die off - you specifically chose those people. I did feel a little weak and sick to my stomach.

It's weird to think how many people died there - of both torture and sickness. And although they did have a gas chamber there it was used 6 times. Something I thought was strange - and as I was walking through it I admit I panicked a little - was that they were told they were going to have a shower. That's the worst ruse I have ever heard. Especially because they would see the burning that was going on next door. And the worst was that of course the clothes would be sanitized and reused for the next prisoner - straight off the back of someone who had died yesterday.

The strangest part of the whole camp was the beauty of the garden surrounding the gas chamber and crematorium. It was so green and so lush and so calm and pretty. But it was also the home of the ashes of thousands of people.

Also surrounding the camp was the clearest river I have ever seen. Just a little quick moving bubbling stream that was so calm - apparently many ashes were sent down that river.

Even without the stories narrated to us by the tour guide it just wasn't a comfortable place to be and you really felt the physical presence of nothingness.