We took a tour and went to the Dachau concentration camp located outside of Munich. The tour began with a train ride to Dachau which was about 20 minutes away.

The train ride was emotional as we thought about the thousands of people forced into boxcars and sent to this concentration camp in the 1930’s and 40’s. It is hard to the terror they must have felt.

We arrived at Dachau and walked through a park-like trail before arriving at the main gate of the former Dachau Concentration Camp. Along the trail, there are information boards about the camp.

We arrived at the main entrance of the camp. The entrance was through a gate arched in the centre of a building with a watchtower on the peak.

The iron gate which has the inscription  “Arbeit macht frei” (Work sets you free).

We entered through the gate and saw a very large area which contained several buildings and large rows of rectangular gravel areas. On the right was a long building which was now used for the museum.

Inside the museum, there were numerous rooms with displays and information about the camp.

We walked through the museum and read the information on how horrific it was. It was difficult to imagine just how much pain and suffering occurred in the building we were walking through. There were displays of images of prisoners and the living conditions they endured. It was a very emotional time walking through the museum and to see and read the terrible things that were done there.

After going through the museum we went into the yard of the concentration camp. This was also a surreal experience walking down the former rows of where the barracks were.

There were rows and rows of barracks with a central road. Along the central lane were rows of trees of both sides.

We walked the central road and it was very long and hard to imagine the size and horror of all the barracks.

We walked the length of the barracks then headed to a small barbwire gate which was off to one side of the camp. All along the perimeter of the camp was an area with a strip of grass and ditch before the barbwire fence which was electrified during the operation of the camp

We walked through the gate to an area of the camp that was separated from the remainder of the camp.

There was a brick building secluded in an area away from the remainder of the camp. This building was used to incinerate prisoners of the Nazi regime.

We went into the building and it was very emotional for us. The rooms were divided into a process used to remove their property, then their clothing from the victims before they were killed.

They were then moved to the “shower” room and were gassed until they died.

They were then stacked in an another room and other prisoners would be forced to move them to the incinerators and burned. Victims were stacked three at a time in each incinerator and the ashes removed to the rear of the building and disposed of.

We went outside to the rear of the building and came there were two monuments behind the building marking the thousands of victims buried in unmarked mass graves.

Here we saw the monuments for the thousands of victims buried in an unmarked mass graves.

We then walked down a trail into a wooded area behind the building.

We saw a plaque which identified the area where the Nazi’s would use their pistols and execute prisoners.

There was a wall at the other end of the pistol range where the prisoners would be killed.

The visit to the Dachau Concentration Camp was very emotional. The sheer realization that we were in the very location that this horrendous atrocity occurred gave us overwhelming feelings of sadness, heartbreak, and extreme grief. It was important to see and to remember that tyranny can happen and the high cost of freedom that has been paid.

“Auf Wiedersehen und einen schönen Tag”