Dachau

After our tour of Munich on Sunday, we took another guided tour, but this one took us away from the city, to the notorious city of Dachau.

Our tour group took a train for about 45 minutes (I think) away from Munich to the small town and then a bus for about 15 minutes to the visitor's center. The entrance to the former concentration camp is very unassuming...you would think you were going to a park, a library, or just some other regular part of any town. There is no pomp or circumstance (and rightly so, I think), but we started the tour at the remains of the old SS (Hitler's secret police) offices and the railroad. Our first bit of trivia was that the people being shipped to Dachau were not dropped off at the front gate, but were paraded around town (locals were encouraged to physically and verbally harass them) on the way to the prison camp. That set the tone for what we were about to see -- the Nazis did everything they could to humiliate, de-humanize, hurt, and make "life" miserable for the people (Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, criminals, political prisoners, outcasts, etc.) imprisoned at Dachau during World War II.

Our tour guide was great at setting the tone of respect for the lives lost at that camp. He asked for our respect and admired that our group took the time out of Oktoberfest to learn more about what terrors of which humanity is capable...all of this in hopes that it would never happen again. Dachau was the first Nazi concentration camp and originally set up in 1933 (and lasted until American liberation in 1945) for prisoners of the Nazi party (keeping opponents there helped Nazis run unopposed for whatever they wanted). Eventually, it became what we know now as a concentration camp...it was not a death camp, but a work camp. The prisoners were sent to different sites to do hard labor on Nazi projects, all the while they were mistreated, abused, and killed at the whim of the guards. Over 200,000 people were imprisoned there, with over 25,000 dying at camp and 10,000 at the work sites.

An example of the terrors at Dachau was the fact that all prisoners had to wear hats. If they were not wearing their hats, they were subject to beatings, torture, and probably death. Guards, whenever they wanted, would take a man's hat off and toss it into "no man's land". The prisoner had a choice...he/she could go get the hat and risk getting shot (it looks like an attempted escape), or take the punishment of not wearing a hat. The motto on the gates "Arbeit macht frei" (Work sets you free) turned into that punishment on a seemingly daily basis...an example of how this Nazi system dehumanized the people they took prisoner.

It was a moving tour, complete with a museum (following step by step what the new prisoners went through), a film, and a walk around the barracks, religious memorials, and finally, the crematorium and gas chamber. Officially, the gas chamber was never used, but several reports of it "working great" lead us to believe that individuals were killed in that room that was labeled "showers."

A very powerful experience. The motto is "never again", but unfortunately genocides and mass killings still happen (ex: Darfur). If you have an opportunity to go to a concentration camp or learn more about it, I'd highly recommend it. It's not a fun thing to learn or talk about, but it's important that we learn how things like that happen, so we can keep it from happening in the future.