I have been interested in this part of history since doing a report on the holocaust in 8th grade so to be able to visit this memorial was quite an experience for me. Plus after watching and being obsessed with the Band of Brothers I really wanted to see this first hand. :) we got a good start in the morning but the Autobahns were still full of stau's! (That would be traffic jams in English :) It probably has something to do with it being right outside of Munich and Oktoberfest is still going on. Ooops, anyway we made it Dachau about an hour later than planned but that was ok. At first we drove by the camp which was neat because we were able to see the whole thing from the road. We headed back to the visitors center, grabbed a couple of sandwiches in the cafeteria and headed right through the main gate of the camp. The camp is free to wander through at your own pace or you can get the audio guide but everything is captioned in English so we just read our way around.
Dachau was a work camp; the inmates were used to construct the buildings there. But there were more purposes there, including a center for medical experimentations on the inmates, a special prison for priests, a departure point for people shipped east to the gas chambers and a place for prisoners from other camps. People were housed there ling after the war was over. After the liberation the fences were taken down but the survivors had nowhere to go so they stayed.
We entered through the main iron gate labeled, "Arbeit macht frei" - Work makes you free.
The museum is the former Administration building.
The barracks were reconstructed to show how the inmates lived. It was quite jaw dropping.
Behind the 2 reconstructed barracks was the camp road with foundations of 30 or so other buildings.
At the end of the camp road are the Catholic Mortal Agony of Christ Chapel (1960):
The Jewish Memorial (1967):
The Protestant Church of Reconciliation (1967):
And the Carmelite Covenant (1964):
The final part of our tour took us to the Crematorium area which was the hardest part to go through. That is probably why they've made it into a beautiful memorial garden because it also serves as the burial grounds for 1000's that died there.
It was about an hour and a half to our hotel in Salzburg and the drive there was great! To see the Alps come into view was amazing!
I found a great deal on Hotel Ganslhof that offered the Salzburg Card for a 3 night’s stay which was perfect for our time. The card gives you access to so many of the sights in Salzburg as well as free use of public transportation and I'm sure we'll get good use out of it. We checked in and walked down to Biergarten die Wiesse for their home-brewed wiezen and eats.
It was good and relaxing and then we took a stroll down to the river to check out the town and sights.
It was all lit up and beautiful but we were tired, it was late and we will plan to see it all in detail in the next few days!
Pictures from the day:
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| Dachau Concentration Camp and Salzburg 10.1.11 |
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