Dachau

 Today was a tour of Dachau. We meet our tour guide in Marienplatz, it is the central square in the city centre of Munich. It has been the main square since 1158.

Our guide for the day was Scott an Australian from Western Australia. He has been in Germany for 10 years and lives here with his German wife. We then took public transport to Dachau, first a delayed train ride then a switch to a public bus.  Following a ten minute walk we had arrived. 

Dachau was one of the first concentration camps built by Nazi Germany and the longest running one, opening on 22nd March, 1933.

“On March 22, 1933, a few weeks after Adolf Hitler had been appointed Reich Chancellor, a concentration camp for political prisoners was set up in Dachau. This camp served as a model for all later concentration camps and as a “school of violence” for the SS men under whose command it stood. In the twelve years of its existence over 200.000 persons from all over Europe were imprisoned here and in the numerous subsidary camps. 41.500 were murdered. On April 29 1945, American troops liberated the survivors.”

The gatehouse.  The entry to Dachau.

Entrance to Dachau with the gate inscription reading “Freedom Through Work”. 

To say that this was a somber place, full of reflection of the hardship and death, is an understatement. Hearing the stories from our very knowledgeable guide just continued to paint a sad sad picture. How humans could treat fellow humans like this is a question of twisted reasoning. The types of torture and misconduct dealt by the Nazi’s were atrocious. The images on display and videos played only reinforced the inhuman treatment the prisoners endured. 

The German people have to their credit acknowledged that this hideous place was real and that it forms part of their history. No longer are myths like ‘we didn’t know’ perpetuated.  Students at all German schools study this history in their curriculum as a type of reflection of “never again”.

Within the compound there are now several memorials serving as reminders of the atrocities. This one (above) is the International Memorial. It was designed by Nandor Glid, a Yugoslavian artist and concentration camp survivor. His sculpture conveys fence posts, barbed wire and human skeletons. The human figures depict those who, in acts of desperation, jumped into the barbed wire fencing to end their suffering. The instant a prisoner ran towards the fence they were shot by the SS guards.

A reconstructed action of perimeter fence: with barbed wire, electric fence, ditch and canal further beyond.

        The pictures show the pit that the prisoner would 

have to climb in then out, the barbed wire and electric fence in order to escape. There were no known prisoner escapes from Dachau.  A sad fact is that many of the guards and their officers did escape.  Almost none were captured or tried.

The day was a feeling of emotions in tension: on one hand a feeling of ‘must attend’ to not forget versus a feeling of shame and horror that humans do this to one another.  It is a sad place.  The history is very well presented.  The Germans, as they do, have turned a sentence into a word ‘vergangenheitsbewaltigung’… which means something like ‘the work of coping with the past’.  I think they are leading in tackling such difficult and complex issues of history.

Our full day saw us return to Munich and a much needed rest for the next day’s adventure.