Dacau

Hi all... we decided to do a walking tour or Dachau which was the first concentration camp built by the Nazis and was a model for all others.  We met our guide in the Munich town square (below) before catching a train out to Dachau which is a village on the outskirts of Munich.

At the entrance to the camp the gates read "work will set you free", whereas the Nazis intended to work people to death so maybe that's their idea of freedom.  In fact many prisoners deliberately ran into the electric fence that surrounds the camp in order to die quickly.

There were hundreds of camps set up by the Nazis ... some are shown on the diagram below which is just around the Munich area...

Each of these rectangles was the site of a hut that housed 250 prisoners, thought at times there were up to 2000 prisoners to each hut.  The huts were built by the prisoners but were taken down due to safety issues.  A couple were rebuilt to show what they were like at the time.

The site had a crematorium (below) for disposing of the dead bodies (due to disease or torture) but it soon was not big enough so they built a bigger crematorium on site.

At one point they ran out of coal for the crematorium so they just piled up the bodies until they decided to dig a mass grave.

The newer crematorium also housed a gas chamber though its unclear if it was used or not.  The word above the door to the gas chamber reads "shower" and they had fake shower heads etc... to entice the prisoners inside, so they would go in freely expecting a shower.

The new ovens for the bigger crematorium...

This is inside the reconstructed barricks...

One of the prisoners later made a sculpture that represents the horror of the place....now a memorial.

After dachau we headed back to Munich where the fashion needs a little improvement we think....

Now we are heading to Florence on a train through the Alps... we will spend a couple of days and then on to Positano on the Amalfi coast.