Dachau

Today 7/14 I took a tour that went out to Dachau. It's like a thirty min train ride outside of Munich. The first building we went inside was a reconstruction of where the people were held. There were three phases of dachau that started with it just being a work camp to becoming a place where death was the only way to be free. There is a gate to go in the main camp and it says work makes you free the guide said this started off being true and at the end was a sick joke. The rooms where they slept in the first phase, they had their own beds and a shelf for their glasses and things. The second didn't have single person beds but multiple people on them. There is a piece of art in the middle of role call square and it's basically a bunch of bodies laying on barbed wire. The guide said obviously it stands for the horrible things that happened here but a second meaning was hope. There is a grassy area around the camp before you get to the ditch and barbed wire fences. If the people even stepped on the grass they were immediately shot. The meaning of hope comes from that they could end their lives when they wanted instead of being randomly picked to be killed or beaten to death. One of the messed up stories he told is that guards would take the prisoners hats from them and throw them in the grass and make them get it. If they refused they were shot, if they stepped in the grass they were shot for escaping. Another building we went to was basically the prison it had a bunch of small cells where people were put as punishment. They were too small to stand up in or sit down so they were just uncomfortable all the time. Another room was all dark and sometimes they would march them out blindfolded after having been in there a while and at role call square in front of everyone take the blindfold off which would blind the people bc they weren't used to the light. We saw both crematoriums that they had. The second one was built bc the smaller one wasn't capable of burning all the bodies they had. The second one "barrack x" was also where they had the "showers" that they put them all in and then stuck gas in to kill them all. I think the whole time I was there I just wanted to cry. It was just sickening to be in the buildings where horrible evil people did awful things to people. The guide said that Auschwitz worse bc it still has piles of glasses and shoes that were taken from people. I think I'd really like to try to go there. I think it's part of history that everyone should see at some point.