Day Three...

Our day started at 3:00 am, that’s what happens when you take an 8-hour nap the day before. We both laid in bed a couple more hours and then decided that 5 am was an acceptable hour to get up. We got ready, ate at the hotel and were on our way to Dachau Concentration Camp. Before we left our hotel we asked the lady at the hotel for directions to the Dachau (Dow-chow is how we pronounced it) and she looked at us for a few seconds and then asked with a puzzled expression Dachau (Dock-ow)? We realized that we needed to work on our throaty German pronunciation. "Ja, Ja" we both agreed and she explained the directions that we needed to take us there. More subway and bus adventures until we stopped at the small town of Dachau.

We arrived as they were opening the front gates and began our journey through the first concentration camp ever built in Germany. We entered the camp through the same gate that the prisoners entered as they stepped off the trains.



We made our way through the camp to the main building where the kitchen was, the guards worked and lived and also where they checked in the prisoners as they arrived. The building had been turned into a museum explaining the history of the Nazi regime. There was so much to read and take in, but one political poster that stood out to me read, “Hitler is our only hope” these kinds of posters were used to persuade the people to vote for Hitler. I was amazed to learn that he used force to get his way into office and was never really chosen by the people.



The museum also highlighted the individual stories of different Jewish prisoners, along with Jehovah Witnesses, homosexuals, immigrants, and those willing to challenge the Nazis government that were put into prison here. Each face and story was so different. One Jewish woman's comment really struck me, as she was walking back to her bunker she caught the eyes of an old woman looking out through a window. She said she stopped and looked at her with great sadness at how dead she looked and as she began to walk away she looked back and realized that she was looking at a reflection of herself.

Another interesting note they called these camps, re-education and re-training centers so that the people wouldn't question what was happening behind the camp walls.

As we finished walking through the museum we watched a 25-minute video with live footage of camp life. It was disturbing to see the piles of bodies left on the train cars and in piles under snow. The camps filled so quickly and the killings so numerous that they couldn't dispose of the bodies fast enough so they began to stay in piles around the camp and with a shortage of coal they had to bury the dead in shallow graves. There were only 32,000-recorded deaths at Dachau but there is believed to be thousands more.

After the movie was over we walked out to the barracks and saw the sleeping quarters and ‘common area’. The camp was built to house around 6,000 inmates and when the US came into the camp in 1945 there were over 30,000 men, woman and children living there. We ended our tour of the camp with the crematorium. Art and I got to stand inside a gassing chamber.

I was so overwhelmed at how the camp was built and sustained on fear. The words “May We Never Forget” were written across the gates of the camp as we left.



This was something I have always wanted to see. It was a powerful reminder for me that I need to pray for the Jewish people.

After such a heavy morning we decided to go out for a brat and beer at an open market. We people watched and processed our time at the camp together. After lunch we decided to go see the Beer Museum, which none of the information was in English so we made it up as we went. We then went to our first of many large, old churches. This was St. Peter’s Church in Munich. They had many painting depicting Peter’s death upside down on the cross. There was a lot of gold in the sanctuary and a thick haze of incense burned through out. It was a very beautiful church.


We decided that we needed a nap; we had been up since 3 am. After a good rest we woke up and were ready for another meal and a fun night in a beer hall. We found this great, old restaurant that had a very busty waitress who helped us find a table to share with eight old German men. They were obviously trying to solve the world’s problems over their beer and eyed us when we sat down at their table. Art ordered 8 brats and kraut and I ordered a crispy pork meal. When they brought out our food all the men stopped and stared at me with big eyes and a smile, I did not realized I ordered a German's man’s meal, equivalent to our steak and potatoes. I could not finish my four pieces of pork and dumplings but I sure tried. It was so good! We left there and I tried to talk Art into going to a new beer hall but it was of the questions and back to HB for us. More beer, friends and making merry!