Today was a heavy day as we headed to Dachau the former concentration camp during WWII. We woke up and left the hotel around 9 AM as it was not too far away and is right outside of Munich. Once we arrived we stopped for the bathroom before we headed and met up with our tour guide. The tour began around 10 AM and our guide was simply amazing. The way he was able to illustrate the story of the camp from its beginnings in 1933 to its eventual end when the Americans and Allies freed it in 1945 is hard to put into words. He emphasized time and time again that Dachau was a concentration camp and not a death camp (like Auschwitz) and was initially used to detain political enemies of the Nazis. This did not make it better though, as we went further along throughout the tour the more real the place felt despite none of the original barracks remaining, but the reconstructed ones with pictures created a deep sense of sorrow in my heart.
As we continued along we made it to the crematoriums which I think was one of the most depressing buildings we saw. They had the original one which was tiny compared to the larger one where they killed thousands of people throughout the camps history. The way the Nazis would trick them into the building telling them they were going to be given a shower before the gas would hit them made me tear up inside. The rest of the tour was just as good and I remember right before it ended our guide told us his personal connection along with being in the former German military. He told of a camp they liberated in the Balkans during his time which was something similar to Dachau and it was hard for me to comprehend such evil still existing in our world so recently. After the tour we were given free time to explore and I walked through the museum trying to read as much as possible during our short time left, I tried to focus on the liberation of the camp to not put myself into a worse mental state. After forty five minutes or so we met back up together to head back to Augsburg and despite being a very somber day I would do it over again every time because of how important I think it was to see such a devastating part of human history.
