3rd Day in Munich, Germany

The main gate to Dachau, which was the first lie to the prisoner about through work came freedom.
see all photos »

We got up early, got breakfast at a bakery, and headed for Marienplatz to meet for an English speaking walking tour of the Third Reich, which covers important sites and facts about the birth of the Nazi movement and Adolf Hitler's rise to power. The tour started at 10:30am and lasted about two and half hours. Most of the places we visited Marcy and I had walked by the day before and got pictures of them, but we did not know their significance in the Nazi party's rise to power. We learned about his childhood and about how he moved to Munich to become an artist. We saw buildings that he had drawn in some of his artwork. We also went to the top floor of the Hofbrauhaus where the first mass meeting and Hilter's moving speech. We saw where his march and failed attempt to seize power by force at Feldherrnhalle and learned about his very short imprisonment where he wrote his book. We also walked by the building where the Gehemen Staatspolize (Gestapo) Headquarters was located. The students of White Rose resistance where killed in the original building and it was not rebuilt after World War II. A new building was built and a plaque was placed on it, in order to not to forgot what evil the Gestapo committed. The final stop was at King's Square or Konigsplatz in German, where the Nazi headquarters and many Nazi rallies took place, including the book burnings and many of Hitler's speeches. We also went into the the building where Hilter's Office in Munich was located and today the building is a Music School. After the tour we had just enough time to grab some lunch and get back to Marienplatz for our next tour to Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp. We tour left at 1:15pm from the same spot and we got a $3 Euro discount for doing both tours. We had to take a city train and a bus to reach the city, which took little over an hour to get there. It was very eerie and depressing site. This concentration camp was opened in March of 1933 just two months after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. It became the training ground for the SS soldiers and model for all of the other camps that spread across Europe. We first walked through the main gate that said "Arbeit Macht Frei", which means basically through work came freedom and was just the first of many lies told to the prisoners by the SS. We walked through the museum and learned about the daily torture and punishments. We learned that the SS used different colored triangles and symbols on the sleeves of the prisoners to tell the difference between jewish, political, religious, immigrant, homosexual, or an a-social. We walked through the cells, barracks, and gas chambers. We saw several memorials that had been set up inside the camp for the over 200,000 prisoners that had been imprisoned there. There was also a twenty-two minute documentry film in English about the camp and the prisoners with real footage from the Allied forces that liberated the camp. It was a very sad, but powerful experience visiting this memorial. I think it is very important, so that no one every forgets what happened and we can stop it for ever happening again. On the way back from the tour we stopped at our hotel to change and relax before we went to dinner. We had made reservations at this German resturant near Marienplatz. It was a really nice dinner with an ecordian player and some authentic German food. It was great until the couple behind us both lit up cigarettes and the smoke just engulfed our table. Luckily we were pretty much done with our food, so we finished up our food and left. We walked around a little to enjoy the city at night and then back to the hotel to go to sleep.

It was a very sad, but powerful experience visiting this memorial.