Dachau

Our excursion into Dachau, one of the concentration camps, was by far the most sobering of our visit. Even the weather was gloomy. It is one thing to hear or read about a concentration camp, it is a completely different matter to visit one in person.

Here we are at the gates of Dachau. The sign on the doors mocks the prisoners. It proclaims "Arbeit Macht Frei" or "Work will make you free." We know better, don't we.

This is the major installation office. It is now a museum.

Can you tell what this sculpture is constructed of?

Never again.

This is a guard tower. They surrounded the perimeter. See how I am standing at the edge of the grass. The grass marked the "no man's land." If I had actually lived here, I would have been flirting with disaster. One more step into the grass and I would have been gunned down. Some prisoners fatally ran into the grass for a quick end to their suffering.

The barracks

The sleeping bunks. The prisoners were really crammed in here. The slept head to foot. You were lucky to even get a place to lay down. By the end of the war, Dachau had thousands more prisoners than its capacity to hold.

The bathroom. Charming.

The crematorium where they burned the dead bodies.

This is the site of a mass grave. There were several sites like this, for the times when the crematorium was overbooked.

A parting shot of the camp. You can see the barracks in the background. All of the lines in front are the foundation lines for the other barracks that have since been torn down. And this is only one column of barracks. You can also see the gloomy sky in this picture. The weather that day matched the atmosphere completely.

What a depressing visit. I felt so grateful that I had the freedom to walk in and OUT of the gates. Those who lived here did not have that luxury.