Dachau

The first real day we were in Munich, we went to the Dachau Concentration Camp, the first concentration camp set up in Germany. I learned a lot of things I didn't know about the holocaust. We decided to take a 3 hour guided tour provided by the memorial and it was really informative. I usually don't like tours but this one was really well done. The camp was set up with a museum (an old maintenance building), 2 of the 40 barracks (these had been recreated), a bunker for "prisoners"(for political opponents and even some royalty, the guy who tried to assassinate Hitler, etc), and a crematorium. There were 2 churches and a Jewish memorial. One of the churches (that was built after the holocaust for people to pay their respects) had no 90 degree angles to be a sharp contrast to the extreme symmetry of the camp. The Jewish memorial was a large brick structure that you could walk into, with a opening at the very top to be a light of hope. It was moving.

It was very surreal to actually be walking on the grounds where all this had gone down.

And it was freezing. Liz and I were in coats and mittens and jeans and we were cold. To imagine how cold the prisoners were is not fathomable since this was March and they had been there in the dead of winter with just a thin prison outfit. An interesting point that was made, was about the order that existed. The layout of the camp was perfectly symmetrical. Apparently, the barracks had to be perfectly clean. Everyone had to be punctual and as clean as humanly possible. Our tour guide said they had blankets to sleep with and probably soap and toilet paper, which I was surprised by.

Our tour guide said that when a prisoner was to be punished, it had to go through someone higher up and it could take onwards of 2-3 months to receive their punishment. They did this to create constant fear because you never knew when you would be punished. I don't think this included killing a prisoner, I'm sure they could do that without asking permission. We saw some areas where the prisoners would be hung up on poles by spikes into their backs. There were also parts of the bunker where prisoners would have to stand in a tiny space for a days. There were also some prisoners kept in the dark for months on end. We saw the crematoriums where the people would walk into expecting to be showered but instead suffocated to death with poison. They also performed a lot of experiments on prisoners at dachau, including putting the prisoners into freezing water to experiment with hypothermia and dropping them from the sky to experiment with the effects of altitude.

I've been to a few holocaust museums, in DC and Israel. But this was so different. I couldn't even cry. The day was dreary without sun and with a cold drizzling rain.