Dachau

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Today we went to Dachau. It was an easy trip, first on the S-Bahn and then a 726 bus from Dachau station to KZ-Gedenkstatte. Another perfectly clear day, but cold, -8 Celsius most of the day! Dachau, to the locals, is a small village on the S2 line about 15km out of Munich, but to the rest of the world its synonymous with Concentration Camp. Dachau concentration camp was the first and served as a model for the many more built throughout Nazi Europe in the early 1940s. Only a portion of what was the camp is now a memorial site. You enter the site through the same gates that the prisoners entered, iron gates with the words "Work sets you free" cast in to the gate. You then enter the same building where the prisoners were registered, stripped of clothes and belongings, and showered. Some were hung from the ceiling beams by their arms which were bound behind their backs. These rooms, now known as the museum, are full of displays. The first display gives some political, social and economic background to the rise of the NSDAP after WWI. It was informative and I now understand more about the environment that lead to the installation of such a regime. We watched a 30 minute film on Dachau which was extremely powerful, there was absolute silence as c. 200 people watched. There were very many displays and a lot of information to read throughout the rest of the museum.

We left the museum buildings and entered the central courtyard which is were prisoners assembled for roll call may times a day. There is now a large multifaceted monument which has gradually been installed as a memorial, I will post an image of the central feature. Another memorial was made of a large iron chain emblazoned with the various coloured triangles that the SS used to mark prisoners as Jew, priest, politician.... it was upsetting to realise that the pink triangle was not part of this memorial.

One of the barracks has been restored and we could walk through this. The other barracks are no longer there but you can walk down the central area to the religious memorials at the other end of the camp. There are three, a Jewish memorial to the estimated 6 million Jews killed by the Nazi regime, a Catholic memorial and a Protestant memorial. From this end of the camp we walked to the two crematoria. Here you can follow the path prisoners walked, as they walked to their death. When the camp was liberated these rooms were piled full with bodies as the had been to little coal to run the crematorium.

Visiting Dachau Concentration Camp was a good thing to have done and I have a greater understanding of how these things happened. At its fullest, there were 60,000 prisoners held there.

We were supposed to go to the Munich Philharmonic's New Year's Eve concert in the evening. I had assumed the concert would be 7 or 8pm, but it was 5pm! I had booked it such a long time ago that I had forgotten. Another uniquely German thing, who would have thought that it would start at 5pm. We didn't get home from Dachau until 6pm. We had dinner at home and watched the public fireworks display from our window. The display was at the Friedensengel (peace angel) which we can see from where we are staying.