Concentration Camp

Today, Tiffany and I planned on going to a concentration camp. We weren't sure which one to go to, or even how to get to one, so we woke up early to go into town to talk to the people at the information center and the train station. The lady at the information center wasn't much help, she didn't even know what a concentration camp was so I had to harshly say "the place where the Nazis killed the Jews." Then she knew what I was talking about but hadn't been to one, so she couldn't tell us which was the best. Chris told us the one called Dachau was the best, so we decided we'd go there. On the way to the train station, we stopped at the bakery for breakfast and bought sandwiches to eat on the train during lunch. The guy at the train station was really helpful, and we ended up taking a few trains to Dachau which is near Munich. He gave us a public transportation day pass, which only cost 28 euro, so that we could take all the buses, trains, and subways we wanted. We had to take 2 trains, the subway, and a bus each way.
We arrived at Dachau and went through the front gate which said in German "work is freedom." When you first step into the camp, it's kind of weird thinking how many people used to pack the place and how many died there. The whole place is surrounded by cement walls with barbed wire on the top. There are also watch towers every few meters. The maintenance house was the first building we went into, it was really big and the Jews built it themselves. It was filled with historical quotes, stories, and artifacts to look at while walking through, so it was more of like a museum. Some cool things we saw in there were their uniforms, the whipping table, some of their belongings, memorials, pictures, and sculptures. After that, we went to the open area in front of the maintenance house where more memorials and sculptures were built in honor of the people who worked there. The sculptures were made up of skeleton-looking-people joined together to make shapes. It looked painful but cool. Next, we went to see a bunker, where the prisoners lived. The beds were bunked with 3 beds on top of each other and were really close together. They also had a locker area to keep their clothes in. They had to keep everything spotless and make their beds for inspection. This also meant that they couldn't carve things into the wood or have any stains on it or else they'd get beaten. We saw their bathroom which didn't look so bad except the toilets weren't in stalls, they were all just together. There were only 2 bunkers remaining, but there used to be around 30. After the bunkers were a few large memorials to pray in if you wanted. I took a picture of Tiff in one, and it looked like there was some sort of ghost in it. Then, 3 current churches are on the grounds of the camp. There was a christian church, a Russian orthodox church, and some sort of convent. I would be too creeped out to go to my church every Sunday in a mass grave. Next, we went to the Crematorium and "Showers." This was the creepiest part. We saw the old crematorium, which was pretty small, and so many people ended up going to Dachau that they had to build a bigger one. In the bigger one, there was a holding room where the victims were told they'd be taking a shower and then a "shower room" equipped with faux shower heads that were used to pour the poisonous gas in. We got to go in the shower room, and it was really dark and scary. We got out of there fast into another room where the dead bodies were dragged. The next room had 6 body ovens in it that could fit up to 3 corpses at once to burn. The last room was for people that already died due to work conditions and disease. They would just burn those people in the crematorium without gassing them. It was really crazy to think about what happened just a few decades ago right where we were standing. I'm glad I went.
Before leaving, we stopped at the visitor center cafe and ate some spaghetti. Then, we caught a bus and the subway back to Munich and bought a few souvenirs before catching 2 more trains back to Landsberg. When we got back, we had dinner at an original German fast food restaurant. They sold burgers, fries, and chicken and everyone was eating their fries with forks. We also went shopping and bought 2 sweater dresses that looked really cute. Tomorrow, Chris says he has a surprise planned for us so I can't wait to see what that is.