Dachau – Work won’t set you free

Dachau is just outside of Munich – a 20-minute train ride, and a bit of a walk or a 10-minute bus ride. I had time, so I walked there, along a tiny canal much of the way, with benches and lounges and “you are here’ signs, with leaves falling and dancing at my feet and crunching as I went by.

It was a dark day, which seemed fitting given where I was going. When you get to the site, there is a visitor center, with bathrooms, maps, and audioguide rentals. Then there are signs along the path to the entrance to the camp, giving some of the history of the area. When you get to the gate, you can go through the reproduction Arbeit Mach Frei gate. The original gate was stolen in 2014. It was brought back to the site after an anonymous tip was given to the police and lead to its recovery. The original is now in a sealed plexiglass box near the end of the museum near a room full of remembrances of the victims and a book with info about all the people who went through the camp).

The entrance to the former concentration camp and the associated museum is free. Audio guides are a nominal fee.

The site has two rebuilt bunkers with reproductions of the beds the prisoners slept in and examples of inmate lockers and the community rooms in the bunker, a main administration building (which now has a very detailed museum display going step-by-step through the history of how Dachua came to be, how the site worked, and artifacts from inmates and the SS.

The original position of each bunker is shown by an outline of the building’s base filled with stones, each with a large stone marker as to its bunker number near the central walkway between all the buildings.

Finally, the former prison building is open. There isn’t much there as most rooms are empty with no info, but, as I had the place to myself for 15 or 20 minutes, it is quite eerie as they explain some info about some of the prisoners and SS leaders there and the torture perpetrated on them. At least one was decent to the prisoners, but many were exceedingly willing to torture and kill for no reason, and examples relating to particular people are given.

Some murders seemed to be staged as suicides as well. Prisoners had many levels of treatment here while being detained. For example, one man who had a plan to assassinate Hitler was there for a while, and some priests as well (german priests were allowed to have services while here). The rooms were small and had one window looking out (unless it was boarded over for punishment of being in the dark).

Other prisoners were treated better – one guy had 3 cells to himself for a while. There was a small hatch in each door for food to go in, a toilet in the corner and not much else. A few toilets remain, but other than that all that is left is peeling walls and aged numbers on the doorways of the prisoners. You can see in through a hatch into most of the rooms, and a few have plexiglass dividers so you can see more of a few rooms of interest. For more info on the lengths Hitler would go to torment people, see my page about Lidice.

At the back of the site, you can see the final crematory, the original crematory which had to be replaced quickly because it was over-utilized, and several chapels by different religions (Russian Orthodox, Jewish, Protestant, and …..). You can also see the intended shower chamber to be used for the chemical killing of prisoners, which for some reason was completed but never used. The changing room was near the building entrance, and then the “shower” room followed by a room to hold bodies before being taken through to the furnaces. No one knows why it wasn’t used.

Behind the crematory is a short path that takes you past the graves of ashes, and unknown people, as well as the firing line and other memorials to those who lost their lives there.

You could spend all day in the museum if you wanted to read even most of everything and see the documentary about the camp they show in a theater there (in different languages throughout the day). museum displays show the camp, how Hitler came to power and designed the “final solution”, who ran it, what life was like, the final hours when the allies were approaching, what happened in the time after the war was over (including showing locals touring the site while it still had piles of dead people everywhere) and the survivors returning to the camp for memorials.

The paper guide also shows you were a few other holocaust-related things are that are close to Dachauu that you may want to check out while you are in the area (although the map isn’t terribly good as several streets don’t have names so I couldn’t find one of the things I was looking for). I was there on a weekday, and there were many older (teenage) school groups there. It was discordant when they were outside by the visitor center and were boisterous and laughing and chasing each other, but they seemed to be more somber after coming into the museum and reading some displays. Many of them seemed to have some paperwork they needed to fill out based on what they learned at the site.

A somber but very worthwhile place to visit.