Dachau Concentration Camp

The only other thing I have pictures from is Dachau. Stephanie let me borrow her camera so I was able to take pictures on my own memory card. We went there on a tour through Garmisch (more on that later) a few days after returning home from Paris. It was... sobering, heartbreaking, hard, among so many other emotions. Dachau was one of the more famous concentration camps, Auschwitz being the most well known. The day was cold and wet, which really added to the whole atmosphere. These pictures get kind of intense, and these aren't even the real graphic ones.

I had seen this sculpture before but never really understood exactly what it was depicting. After standing right below it and looking at it, I realized what it really was. It's showing the prisoners writhing in pain while stuck in barbed wire. This picture can't really show how horrible it really is, but seeing it in person made me gasp in horror and just want to start bawling. The whole barbed wire thing will make more sense after seeing a later picture.

Dachau was rebuilt, meaning that most (if not all) of what you see is not the actual buildings that the prisoners were in. They were rebuilt true to form to show people what things were like.

The Christian memorial

The Jewish memorial

Okay, here's the barbed wire picture I was talking about. The fences were surrounded with 4 or so feet of this barbed wire on the ground. I didn't really understand why at first, then I was told if people tried to escape, climbing up the fence and actually making it over, they would fall upon... this. Makes sense now thinking back to the sculpture in the beginning... horrible, right?

Crematorium

This sign made me sick to my stomach. I was thinking of the movie The Boy in the Striped Pajamas the whole time I was here. If you've seen it, you know why.

The gas chamber. The minute upon stepping foot in there I felt like I was about to have a panic attack. The air, the feel, the lighting, everything... just horrible.

The spout where poison was released.

So pretty... but so haunting.

A bullet hole

The wall right behind the execution site. We weren't completely sure, but we are assuming this is blood.

They had a museum with sculptures, pictures, videos with more information, and other such information.

And so ended a very intense day. I've always been very interested in World War 2 history so this place was really cool to be able to go to. At the same time, seeing things first hand, where you are unable to close your eyes or deny what happened to these people, is hard to take in. Stephanie has been to Auschwitz as well and said that Dachau looks like a resort compared to Auschwitz. Also, Auschwitz did not rebuild or redo anything. I really want to go there now, although I can't even imagine how horrid that place would be.