7 Sep: Munich Day 3

A couple of friends have advised by email, "slow down, already." And this advice fit with our own feelings so today we took it a bit easier, with only one "thing" (planned event) on the list. That was a trip to Dachau, the site of the famous concentration camp of WWII.

For all you might want to know about the history of this camp, you can browse:

• the Wikipedia entry, which is a bit disorganized but has pictures much like the ones we took;
• the Memorial Commission's own virtual tour, which is quite readable.

Dachau the town is a stop on the S-Bahn, about 40 minutes from our door as the public transit goes. From the Dachau bahnhof one takes a local #726 bus a bit more than a mile to the site. In a modern museum building you collect your audio guide device and walk 100 yards to the camp entrance building where the (in)famous iron gate with "Work Makes you Free" is found.

Over the twelve years the camp operated, tens of thousands of people were herded through these gates. Initially political prisoners, anyone suspected of being unreliable; then Jews; later gypsies and other racial minorities; homosexuals; and as the war went on, military and civilian prisoners from occupied countries, primarily Poland.

Just inside the gate you stand in the Roll-Call Square. Here every morning all prisoners assembled: initally 6,000, but soon 20,000 men and more, stood at attention until a complete roll-call was finished. This could take hours.

Beyond this is the space where 30-plus barracks buildings stood. Only the foundations remain.

Arial photo from about 1944.

Two barracks have been reconstructed for the memorial.

At the end of the camp area there are some religious memorial structures, not very attractive and not well-maintained. Beyond is the Crematorium area. Although this was not a "death camp" where prisoners were sent merely to be killed, it was inevitable that many would die from disease, malnutrition, and cruelty. In order to deal with this, the camp had its own crematorium where the bodies of dead prisoners were burned, and the ashes buried.

Near the end of the war the Germans moved in prisoners from outlying camps, so that there were 32,000 in Dachau when American forces liberated it. Drastic overcrowding brought on a typhus epidemic, so at the time of liberation, hundreds were dying each day. The demoralized guards could not keep up, so the Americans found a cordwood-stack of corpses outside the crematorium. (Graphic picture in the gallery.)

The memorial site was created by an international committee with financial support from the Bavarian state government. Besides the religious memorials and museum exhibits, an international competition was held for a sculture, won by a Polish sculptor, Nandor Glid.

After completing our tour of the site we returned to the bus stop, where we found a large mob of fellow tourists, including a couple of sub-mobs of high-school students, all waiting for the thrice-hourly bus to take them back to the bahnhof. When it came there was quite a rush.

Back at the hotel we had a nap and then went out for supper and a stroll around central Munich.