When I wok that morning, I finished packing and prepared while I walked to the train station for the day ahead. That day I visited Dachau, the concentration camp in operation for the entirety of the time the Nazis held power.
After storing my bag in a luggage locker, I met up with the group at a location in the train station I had not yet visited. As I waited for the guide, several other groups with the same tour company assembled nearby, some headed to Salzburg, hope of the famous Austrian composer, Mozart. Additionally, I saw posters advertising several other tours I did not know of previously and wished to partake of but, alas, had no time left in Munich. Soon enough our guide arrived and after verifying the number of participants, lead us to our transportation.
Rather than a chartered coach, this tour availed the use of public transit to travel to the small town of Dachau, long overshadowed by its terrible former resident, the concentration camp. OUr guide took good care of us from the moment we met her, like a mother hen who also had an unstoppable passion for history. I could tell that she believed in telling the story as much as I do, a rare find amongst tour guides; a fact I find highly ironic.
We first stopped outside the guardhouse with its iconic replacement gate. We saw the remnants of railway ties from back when the complex served as a munitions factory during the first world war. Although at first one assumes that the prisoners rode in those horrible cattle cars up to that point, our guide clarified that prisoner transport trains stopped back in town; prisoners walked the remaining distance.
At this point I began to gather that although this guide lacked nothing in passion or knowledge, she appeared to lead the group at a much slower pace than I find engaging. We next moved to the guardhouse gate with its infamous slogan, Arbeit macht frei, work sets you free, adorning the top. The precise gate did not greet the prisoners. Back on November 2, 2014, a still unknown person or group stole the gate. The possible motives elude me. Why would anyone desire such a dreadful artifact? The organization which runs the Dachau memorial site had a new gate fashioned, leaving it in place aver an anonymous tip led to the recovery of the original found hundreds of miles away in Norway under a tarpaulin. The original now sits securely within the permanent exhibition housed in the former maintenance building.
Once through the gate, our feet crunched on the gravel as our eyes took in the stark sight before us. Several original buildings stood to our right while two reconstructed barracks stood to our left behind the large, open “parade” grounds, once the site of daily, torturous roll calls. Further still to the left stood row after row of slightly raised earthen mounds when other barracks once stood, religious memorials, and then finally the crematorium which we could not see upon first entry. Our guide talked for a while there before leading us into the former maintenance building, the site of the permanent exhibition.
After we quickly bypassed several displays before stopping for an interminably long time in a room without exhibits while she talked, I took the guide up on her earlier offer to tour at my own pace. I hated to leave because I could sense her passion but I did not want to miss a single display. We had passed those exhibitions earlier so that she could find a location large enough to hold our entire group so she could talk to us. I also desired a slightly more vigorous pace than the guide could provide with a group that large.
Once separated form the group, I backtracked a bit so that I could peruse the exhibits we skimmed by. The site combined authentic artifacts of the camp and its prisoners as well as large hanging displays describing the various aspects of the camp, the system of work camps, and the overall horrific final solution. From there, I learned of Dachau’s pivotal role, located in the heart of the Third Reich, and how it transformed from a camp designated for political prisoners to one that held every type of person deemed undesirable by the Nazi regime, home to the Jews shuttled in from other camps only from 1944 until the end of the war.
A somber mood began to settle over me as I finished my tour of the main building and moved on to the prison building behind. There I saw the cell where Martin Niemoller spent the majority of the war after he finally shook off the mesmerizing influence of the Nazi regime and stood in opposition. He may have penned his famous poem which ends with “then they came for me…” here.
When I stepped out of the prison building, clouds had moved in, dimming the light. As I perused the memorials, I heard crows ca. I stopped and looked around. The bleak color of the camp, the chill in the air, the lack of direct sunlight, and the sound of crows worked to foster an authentic negative mood in my heart. I could feel myself becoming cynical and snappy. This came in the form of inconsiderate thoughts towards others viewing the memorials at the same time that I did. Two girls took turns taking pictures of each other in front of the memorial designed to look like interlocking skeletal figures twisted on barbed wire. I purposefully avoided taking selfies or posing for pictures on the memorial site. In my opinion, such actions reek of self-focus, of a lack of concern for the victims who suffered and perished there. Minutes later, after I moved over to another memorial, I saw the two girls set up to take more photos. I purposefully walked through the shot, instantly realizing the pettiness of my actions.
I walked form there into the reconstructed barracks, numb from the chill int he air and carrying a heart heavy with the somber reality. Quickly through the barracks, I started walking down the path that once parted the barracks in two. Fat raindrops began to fall, giving purpose to the shadow-lending clouds above. Within seconds, the drops became a steady downpour and I started running towards the closest shelter which happened to be one of the four religious remembrance sites, the first specific memorials erected on the site. I consulted the map I had tucked into my bag, stuffed my camera inside that same back and then dashed over to my final stop of the day, the crematorium.
People entered at either end of the building, although the descriptive signs indicated that I entered the building form the exit along with many other people. I gazed in horror at the ovens, specifically designed for their despicable purpose before stepping into the next room. Immediately I felt the psychological weight of the low ceiling and completely flat four walls and floor but not knowing the purpose until I stepped outside the room.
The gas chamber. While Dachau did not serve as a death camp, hundreds, if not thousands faced death here in the form of a deadly shower. As soon as I read the pacard, I stepped back into the room to honor the victims in the place where they died.
The rain created a reason to wrap up the trip and head back to Munich. I wandered around the bookstore, no gift shop again like the Dokumentationzentrum, waiting to meet up with the rest of the group. Our guide then shepherded us all back to Munich, making sure that we all made it safely to the origin point.
Once back in Munich’s train station, I consulted the time tables to see if I could find an earlier train to Vienna, lessening the amount of time spent in train stations that day. I found one with only one problem. It departed in half an hour with the next train, not leaving until three hours later. I dashed back to the lockers to grab my bag but the time I had paid for elapsed shortly before I arrived. Since the lockers took only cash and I lacked the additional .50 I needed, a mad scramble to withdraw cash, purchase something for supper to get change, successfully open the locker to get my back, dash back to get more snacks for the four hour train ride and then sprint to make the train ensued.
On that ride, I uploaded photos, thanks to free wifi on the train, and decompressed from the heavy day through my journal so that I could prepare for the next day’s adventure.