To be honest I didn’t think of anything of this day at first. When I think of a concentration camp, my mind just always goes to Auschwitz and never anything else. Once we arrived at Dachau concentration camp, we went straight into the tour. The tour guide first stated that understanding the time frame of the camp was important because it kept changing throughout the course of time. This specific concentration camp ran from 1933-1945 and was mainly a labor camp. He showed us a building where they would sleep, mentioning that each of these buildings were built to hold 200 people each. 2000 ended up staying in each, which just blew my mind. The camp was massive, with these buildings spreading across the whole place totaling around 30-40 living buildings. We then walked to the back of the camp, where they would cremate, burn clothes, and handle all of the dead bodies. It’s hard to understand how humans could do these things to other humans. Our tour guide ended the tour by talking about how this time still affects himself and his parents today. Hearing someone describe the lasting impact across generations made me realize how recent these events truly are and how important it is that people continue learning about them. He also shared that survivors of the camp came back to the same camp twenty years later and demanded a memorial site, which is extremely emotional and strong of them to come back to the place they were once in no control of their own lives. Once the tour was over, we took a walk through the museum. After having some sandwiches and debriefing, we headed back to Augsburg on the bus. Looking back on it, this ended up being one of the most impactful days of the trip and gives me a much greater appreciation for the importance of remembering history and honoring the people who suffered through it.
