Dachau Day Trip

Waiting in the Tourist Office for our tour to begin, I was writing in the travel journal my Delanie made for me. An Asian woman asked, "Are you writing your journal?". She is formerly from China, now living with her German husband and two children in Chicago. They have two young children, who remained at home with hubby and his mother. She is visiting friends in Switzerland briefly. Her daughter gave this woman's beloved, and highly temperamental, Siamese cat a shower yesterday "without permission".

Our guide arrived late due to SBahn construction work on weekends. He speaks English with an American accent but came to Germany about 4 years ago, to work as a guide. He tended to be a big "preachy" but one could not doubt his sincerity and his interest and knowledge. He was taken age 8 to his first propoganda film and believed all his government told him. His own mother, he told me, only had 5 years of school before her family was forced to shift to the country during the Cultural Revolution, to work.

I think his message was most governments withhold information from their citizens. He was full of praise for how the German government have preserved Holocaust sites and claimed, though not an official policy, school groups fill Dachau on week days as schools teach the true history of the Third Reich. He asked how many other countries could claim the same. He has met Japanese teachers who have paid their own way to China, to research the true history of massacres, etc., not being content with the sanitized version the Japanese government supports.

We boarded the train for the short journey to Dachau. And here is where the real unusual part of day happened. I sat next to a dark-skinned man with dreadlocks under his hat. Opposite were two young Canadian women, both elementary teachers, travelling with their partners, who were on the tour. One was part Indian; the other part West Indian; both with broad Canadian accents.

We three women began taking, and the bloke just joined in. He was a Gambian from west Africa, working in a Munich hospital and trying to develop his music career. What ensued was a weird and wandering conversation, much to the amusement of other tour members sitting nearby. The Gambian insisted on his photo being taken with me, telling me "You are the best.". When I suggested he had been smoking the "wacky tobaccy" he just smiled and laughed more. He insisted on having his photo taken with me.  It took one of the poor Canadian girls four attempts before he was happy with the photo.  He seriously explained that he needed to be get himself ready. 

On arrival in Dachau, we left the train and I quickly found Woodsie for the short walk to the bus stop. The poor former prisoners of Dachau had no such luxury. They were marched from the train to the camp. If anyone stumbled or fell, no other prisoner was allow to help them. The poor fallen persons was dragged aside and beaten. Many died on the short walk from station to camp. This meant their names were never recorded in the Dachau records.

We saw a statue later dedicated to these "unknowns". The inscription read: DEN TOTEN ZURICH EHR DEN LEBENDE ZUR MAHNUNG; which means HONOUR THE DEAD; WARN THE LIVING:

Blow me down, my new Gambian friend climbs onto the bus, to "say goodbye.". He shook Robert's hand and my hand and, thankfully, alighted.

The approach to the camp is green with trees, shrubs and bushes. It is like a well to do suburb, very peaceful. Such a contrast to the agony and misery of what once happened inside.But the tour group crunching across the gravel path sounded to me like marching boots. 

Dachau was once a munitions factory, with worker accommodation, which was forced to close as part of the end of World War Two treaty. As part of Herr Hitler's push for dominance, he probably arranged a fire at the Reichstag, blamed a Dutch communist on holiday, who was arrested before the fires started, then Hitler used this threat of a communist upcoming revolt for extra power. He promptly rounded up 4,000 "political enemies" and, needing somewhere to imprison them, used the Dachau site.

Only one replica barracks remains. In the first roon are the three tier beds of the munitions workers. Next we saw the more austere three tier beds of the Nazi prisoners.

One incident upset me. I had to really fight back tears. Some tourist kid knocked the beds and a small pile of stones clattered to the floor. He walked away and left them, but the stones got kicked about a bit. I knew Jews put a stone on graves as a sign of respect. Were these stones placed here for that reason?.We were told many suffocated to death in these cramped beds.  I walked over and picked them up and placed them back on the bleak bare boards of the bottom bunk.



Outside were the foundations of all the other barracks. Two rows. Many, many buildings.

We walked over to the crematorium. The old one was small, but as the Germans needed more efficient methods of genocide, they constructed the newer building. No records or witnesses exist to prove murder took place inside, but our guide did to believe this complex would be built and stand idle. I saw the chambers where they were de-contaminated. I saw the waiting room where they derobed. I walked inside the cement chamber with the "shower head holes" and the two places gas canisters were administered, to suffocate those inside. I saw the next room, where the dead bodies were collected.

 Then I saw the last room, the crematorium, where a row of ovens could incinerate the bodies. A whole row of them, with long slides to load in the deceased. This work was often done by Kapos, Jewish prisoners with special privileges, who, are guide assured us, were just trying to survive.


We were told about daily life in the camp. The roll calls that could last for hours. The punishments. The Commandant telling new inmates they were "just pieces of shit". How once they were assigned numbers to dehumanise them, they were no longer allowed to use their names; they were now just a number. It was a sobering experience. I could not get close to the desperation or cruelty of Dachau. It was just one, of course, of many such camps.