Jim’s Dachau Experience
I left our hotel for the 30 minute walk to the Concentration Camp not knowing much about the history or what to expect. I arrived at a very modern looking Visitors’ Centre and arranged for an English speaking guide to take me and a small group through the camp. What an eye opener. The whole site was HUGE. Originally built for about 2000 prisoners in 1938, there were about 40,000 by the time of liberation in 1945. The pictures and stories only tell a small part of the history of this place.
People ask if I enjoyed my experience of Dachau. Enjoy is not the right word but I took away with me an experience that will stay with me for the rest of my life. I only hope that the atrocities that occurred here will never, ever be repeated.
An enlightening day is probably the right word.
Jim
Pictures from Dachau
From the Dachau Memorial Site Website
On March 22, 1933, a few weeks after Adolf Hitler had been appointed Reich Chancellor, a concentration camp for political prisoners was set up in Dachau. This camp served as a model for all later concentration camps and as a “school of violence” for the SS men under whose command it stood. In the twelve years of its existence over 200,000 persons from all over Europe were imprisoned here and in the numerous subsidiary camps. 41,500 were murdered. On April 29 1945, American troops liberated the survivors.
The Memorial Site on the grounds of the former concentration camp was established in 1965 on the initiative of and in accordance with the plans of the surviving prisoners who had joined together to form the Comité International de Dachau. The Bavarian state government provided financial support. Between 1996 and 2003 a new exhibition on the history of the Dachau concentration camp was created, following the leitmotif of the “Path of the Prisoners”.
Go to http://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/ for more information.
Jim and Frankie's Amazing Gap Year Adventure 
This a very touching post. Thank you for sharing it. Nice work.
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One can only imagine what suffering the prisoners suffered at the hands of the SS. I have seen a few of the documentaries and a couple of films that have been made depicting the misery and showcasing the atrocities these people suffered.
At first, as a teen, it seemed a million light years away, something not quite real. But as an adult now, I am appalled, saddened, disgusted and empathetic to those that suffered in these camps as the world is once again, a troubled place indeed.
My description of my feelings cannot be emphasised enough in written words as I am indeed deeply troubled by what has passed and may in fact be happening again in other lands.
Thank you for sharing your experiences. Interesting, yes. Enjoyable, no, not a word that could be used, Jim.
Cheers, Margy.
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