Dachau....

As someone who finds history super interesting, I ended up taking a lot of history classes associated with World War Two. Naturally, the history of the concentration camps will become part of the conversation. Dachau was the first concentration camp opened in 1933 and was originally established to hold political prisoners. However, over the years it expanded to include forced labor, and later imprisonment for Jews, Germans, Austrians, and foreign nationals. After the war, it was used to hold SS soldiers awaiting trial, and then ethnic Germans awaiting resettlement.

Today, Dachau is a memorial site dedicated to the memory of those who died there. The numbers are a bit varying, but it was recorded that around 206,206 people were imprisoned in Dachau over the 12 year period, and of those 31,951 died. Crematoriums were built to dispose of the remains, but in Dachau, there were too many bodies to dispose of. New crematoriums were built and mass graves were dug. Dachau also built gas chambers, however, these were never put into use unlike those in other camps.

Walking through Dachau is an experience in itself, and one I don't entirely recommend doing on your own. I wanted to go because I find it interesting and I didn't really want to force anyone else to join me... But having someone else there to just help absorb it would've been beneficial for my mental state.... It's too much. And it's meant to be too much. You need to know and understand what happened and why it can never EVER happen again, so they push facts and figures in your face. You really can't ignore anything there, because you are there. Right where it happened.

There is a wonderful museum at Dachau. It truly is impressively detailed and well researched, and tries to give you the best idea of what actually happened. It doesn't try to make you feel guilty or horrible, it simply tells you what happened and is incredibly well done. It wasn't until the film that I began to feel truly overwhelmed. There is a 30-minute video they show that shoves everything in the museum down your throat. I felt guilty, and awful, and like a horrendous person for even wanting to visit the place where so many were imprisoned, forced to work, and brutally murdered, all because of one video where they zoom in non-stop on the faces of the dead... If I could choose to visit again, I would skip the video.... It overshadows an incredibly thoughtful and well researched museum that's entire goal is to educate.

You can walk through the entirety of the camp. Certain places have been taken down, like the barracks where people lived, and other places have been built, like places of religious observance. To enter the camp, you still walk through the gate that reads, "Arbeit Macht Frei," translated to mean "Work shall set you free." Of course, there are those tacky tourists who take smiling selfies pointing at the very same gate thousands of people never walked back out of, but generally people are there to learn and remember. Definitely an experience, and one I'm not sure I could do again by myself, but definitely worth a visit.

Love, Alison