Angharad Dowse

2 am and still wide awake.
I changed my alarm and plan at this moment. 😆
We were going to go on an 11am tour.
Now going to the 1pm tour. 😅
So we got up at 10:30 instead haha.
Walked to the station and needed the S section.
Like I know what that means.
But found an S and figured it all out without too much trouble.
My only issue was we bought single journey tickets rather than whole days tickets (which costs us later 😒🙃)
Had a Dunkin’ donut for breakfast and Will bought a chicken schnitzel sandwich but threw it away because he is the most ridiculous person i have ever met when it comes to chicken. If it’s 0.00001% pink it’s no from him.
The train was about 30 minutes followed by a 10 minute bus. (which once again was conveniently already waiting for us at the station - also completely full so they didn’t check tickets which is good because we aren’t 100% sure if our ticket also covered the bus)
Arrived at Dachau concentration camp.
Immediately signed up for the guided tour because it only has 30 spots.
Success.
Sensational price of 4€ each. Big statement of we need to pay our guide but are not profiting from this.
Had about 45 mins to kill so she recommended the museum and gave us directions. Neither of us listened and the museum is not on the map so we went to the food hall instead and planned to ask the guide at the end of the tour where it is rather than face the woman again and looks stupid. 😆
Canteen was quite cheap actually. Cafeteria vibes.
Lots of school classes.
Had pumpkin soup but very mass produced pumpkin soup haha.
Went to the gift shop to pass time and it was predominately books. Considered buying dad one cause I knows it’s right up his alley but he reads a lot so a real chance he has already read what I would have picked lol.

Tour began.
Fabulous guide.

To save myself a lot of time typing I shall be copy pasting from pictures of signs I took.

“The Dachau Concentration Camp.
In March 1933, a concentration camp for political prisoners was establisned on this site. It served as a model for all subsequent concentration camps and was under the command of the SS. In the 12 years of its existence, over 200.000 person:
from throughout Europe were incarcerated here and in the numerous subcamps. More than 43,000 died. On April 29, 1945, U.S. troops liberated the survivors. The former prisoner camp became a Memorial Site in 1965.”

Stop 1.
Showed us an aerial view of the site from a picture taken shortly before liberation. Talked about where we were going to go and what she would talk about.
The S.S headquarters are not accessible to the public. The Police riot squad use them today. We did see some of the buildings from a fence though at stop 2.

Stop 2.
She showed us train tracks. A lot of people assume they arrived by these tracks but they didn’t, they are from what was here before.
She did talk about the location being why it was chosen though. 5km from station which is both close but not so close you stumble across it.

“Arrival at the camp.
The road that formerly connected the SS area with the prisoner camp was uncovered in 2004. This road was how the prisoners reached the camp. Arriving prisoners had to march from the railway station to the camp, while other transports
used trucks to bring the Prisoners to Dachau..
The final months before the end of the war were characterized as a catastrophic overfilling of the camp, due to the SS deporting several thousand prisoners from other camps to Dachau on the evacuation transports. Thousands died in the course of these final transports”

We turned around to see the entrance with the famous sign from a lot of camp signs that’s says

“Arbeit macht frei” which means “work sets you free”

Lies.

She says while considered a labor camp and not an extermination one that 1 in 5 people who came here died.
And no one was freed because of good work.

The original gate was stolen in 2014 in the middle of the night so they made a replacement.
About 2 years ago it was found in Norway in a rubbish tip they chose to keep the copy erected and put the original inside in the museum.
What an adventure it went on.

Stop 3.
We entered into the role call ground where twice daily role call would be taken.
You must attend. If someone was missing because they had died other prisons must bring them out. If someone was missing they had to all stand there for hours until the person was found. Many people died during role call from exhaustion or the elements.

It’s was a huge space. At one point 50,000 people lined up in military lines per day for role call.
On liberation day there was 33,000.
Originally built for 6,000

Stop 4.
We walked passed the bunkers - 17 on each side originally.
There are 2 complete rebuilds at the front and then the rest just have reconstructed foundation outlines to show where they stood.
I thought it was a fabulous way to do it actually.

Stopped by patch of grass and we talked about security. There were watch towers and an electric fence but also acting as a buffer before the fence was a grass section and a ditch. You were not allowed to touch the grass. If you did you were shot immediately. The guards were given 20 days holiday but an extra day per prisoner they killed so they had motivation.
They also played games with the prisoners such as by taking there hat and throwing it on the grass. Your choices are retrieve it and get shot. Ignore command from officer to retrieve it and get shot. 😬
There are a lot of “killed while trying to escape” documentations and she posed the question.
When you look at this can you escape? Is there a way?
The answer is no.
“Trying to escape” is propaganda. These people killed themselves. There is a huge memorial in the middle erected by survivors that depicts their fellow prisoners mangled in the fence.

Stop 5.
Was the crematorium.
Workers in the crematorium only lived some weeks - they either died from exhaustion or were murdered so they didn’t talk about it.
It’s the one area with no real eye witness accounts.
There were 2 crematoriums.
The older one cremated about 11,000 but death rate increased so the prisoners had to build a new one.

“Large crematorium.
The large crematorium was erected between
May 1942 and April 1943. It was to serve both
as a killing facility and to remove the dead.
But the gas chamber in the middle of the building was not used for mass murder. Survivors
have testified that the SS did, however, murder
individual prisoners and small groups here”

- Room 1 was for disinfecting of clothing.

- Room 2 was the waiting room where you were informed on the use of the “showers”

Room 3 was the gas chamber
“Gas chamber.
This was the center of potential mass murder.
The room was disguised as "showers" and
equipped with fake shower spouts to mislead
the victims and prevent them from refusing
to enter the room. During a period of 15 to
20 minutes up to 150 people at a time could
be suffocated to death through prussic acid
poison gas (Zyklon B).”

Guide said there is no real documentation or evidence on the extent.
The purpose is unclear. The truth is they don’t know for sure why there is a gas chamber.

- Room 4
Was death chamber 1. Where they were brought before cremation.

- Room 5 was the crematorium/where the ovens are.
Also
“Execution site
Most hangings were carried out here. The victims were hanged directly in front of the burning ovens.”

- Room 6 was where they stored the dead bodies from the prisoner camp.

Outside was a mass grave woodland cemetery section which wasn’t part of the tour but i wizzed through.
Beautiful really. Quite and calm.

“Graves of Ashes and Execution Site.
The ashes of the bodies cremated in the ovens
were shoveled into pits. After liberation these
places were marked as graves and memorial
plaques erected later.”

Stop 6 was in the middle of the road between all the barracks - she pointed out different religious memorials.
Only 25% of those in Dachau were Jewish.
It was a very pretty area, one that was photographed often by the SS for propaganda.

We went into one of the barracks that has been set up to show how they lived through 3 different sections of time. 1933 is “bearable” - you get your own bed. 1945 is fucked. Originally built for 200 people but housed 2000 each.
We sat inside and this was our last stop on tour. She talked about daily routine, disease and daily life.
They had a big rabbit farm that prisons would try get jobs at because the rabbits were given more food than the prisoners and they would try steal it.
Rabbits were skinned for the guards jackets.

Hygiene was bad.

“The sanitary facilities were entirely insufficient for the growing number of prisoners. Especially in the mornings, they had only a few minutes' time, and this was not enough for several hundred prisoners to crowd into the washrooms and toilets all at once. Like all procedures in the concentration camp, the SS also found ways to use the hygienic facilities to harass, humiliate, and punish the prisoners.

The tour ended. I really enjoyed it!

We then closely inspected the prisoners in the fence memorial before going into the exhibition/museum.
Too much writing tbh.
Wizzed through it reading some and focusing on pictures.
The best sections were the medial experiments, liberation and Dachau trial sections.

Saw the original front gate and fav pic overall was right before one of the bad dudes got hung.
Not enough ended up hung if you ask me.
Should have shot them all on the spot.

I enjoy the terrible dead body photos the most. It makes it more real. It reminds me I need to pay attention.

We then went to the prison inside the prison which was use to remind people “it could always be worse”
One particular torture technique was making one cell into 4 cells. Not big enough to lie or even sit.

The prison had a dark feel to it. A corridor with doors.
Most were empty but a few had signs or displays.
One cell was for a prisoner who tried to blow up Hitler in 1939.

“Georg Elser’s assassination attempt, November 1939:
Growing danger of war made Georg Elser resolve to eliminate hitler. In the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich, a traditional meeting place of the Nazi Party, Elser’s bomb exploded on November 8th 1939,killing eight people and injuring
over 60 in the ruins of the building.
But Hitler had unexpectedly left the hall shortly before.
Georg Elser was arrests the same night.”

Can you imagine if he had been successful.

Another display was

“At around two in the morning the key jangles in the first cell door at the other end of the passageway. Immediately everyone is awake.
With a metallic thud the loosened shackle falls to the floor.
The prisoner from number one takes the first steps to the bunker courtyard.
A shot rings out. A life is extinguished."
Walter Buzengeiger, July 1, 1934.

And so concluded our trip to Dachau.
I loved it. I don’t think your meant to love it but I did.
I love the importance of it.

Bought a ticket back to the station then bought more train tickets.

Terrific maths by 2 separate machines.
5.30€ each.
That will be 15.70€
Ermmmmmm???????
We paid it cause we had to put something is a bit fishy here 🤔🤔🤔
We though maybe higher prices for peak hour but it literally had the math on the screen and it was wrong.

Figured out what train we needed but no new trains appeared on the arrivals board after ours so maybe we got very lucky today not getting stranded.

An easy trip back followed by a lovely stroll through the markets.

Have been freezing out tits off all day but absolutely dying now haha.
We both got curry wurst sausages. I got more fruit covered strawberries and Will got a crepe.
There was a choir singing up high in the main square. Loveeeeeed it.
Lovely vibes 💕💕💕💕💕

Back home now. Writing this has taken me like 1.5 hours haha.

Forgot to write Dachau was the second last camp to be liberated.Read more