Dachau—The Death Camp

The False Promise--"Work Produces Freedom"
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We came to Munich for only one thing: to see the infamous death camp of Dachau (both Kathy and Bud have interests in the history of World War 2). The Germans have many things to be proud in this beautiful land but Dachau is not one of them. They would just as soon be rid of this remnant of their Nazi past. But Dachau and all the dozens of other concentration camps are an undeniable part of history. The camp we visited was the very first one built when Hitler was elected Chancellor in 1933. He filled the jails so full of his political opponents that he had to devise another way of keeping them off the streets, so Dachau was invented. It became the model for all the others. The camp was built to hold 6,000 inmates, but by the time the war was over it contained 30,000 people—Jews, Christians, homosexuals, gypsies and anyone else who fell out of favor with the Third Reich. Its inhabitants were dying by the thousands and the old crematorium couldn’t dispose of them fast enough so a new one was built which contained four more ovens. This one was equipped with “showers” that could spray poison gas and kill many dozens at once but, although it was fully functional, for some reason these “showers” were never thought to have been put into operation. People in the West never really knew much about what Hitler was doing in these camps and that includes the military. When Gen. Eisenhower liberated Dachau in 1945 he found a scene that defied his imagination—railroad cars loaded with corpses and dead and dying people in the dormitories. He immediately ordered the people of Dachau to walk through the camp and view the piles of corpses so they could understand what their own leaders had been up to. Then he ordered them to assist in burying the dead.

The bunks that were always overcrowded
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Doesn’t sound like a very inspirational place to take a vacation, does it! Yet today the town of Dachau is a very lovely place. We enjoyed one of our best meals in a wonderful outdoor restaurant in front of a typical Bavarian hotel. And then it was off to the Fussen area to see some castles.

Today the town of Dachau is a very lovely place.