September 12, 2019: Dachau

A solemn day.  A visit to the Concentration Camp Dachau showed competing emotions today.  Disgust coupled with pride in liberating this camp and other camps like it.  Dachau was a Concentration Camp that seems to be distinguished from an Extermination Camp.  Some 32,000 human beings died at Dachau, with most deaths coming in the last year or two of its operational existence.  While Dachau had crematories and gas chambers, it seemed to be more of a convenient way to reduce those who were burdened with illness or who had already died due to poor sanitary conditions.  Other camps served to provide more voluminous exterminations.  Tim Kiniry worked at Buchenwald for several weeks beginning in April 1945 treating critically ill patients, many with tuberculosis.  In fact, he was at Buchenwald when the announcement came that the war in Europe had ended.  Some 56,000 had died at Buchenwald.

Following Dachau, it was an afternoon of sightseeing in Munich.  We saw Hitlers Office Building, the famous Munich Glockenspiel, a pub from the 1300's, and the building where Hitler joined the group that he would later lead into Nazi domination in Germany.

One more full day left.  Flying out of Munich to Atlanta Saturday morning.


 







The foundations below are not the original foundations of the barracks, but were placed to mark the many dozens of buildings that house the dramatically overcrowded prison.













Below:  Stacked bodies at Dachau.



Below:  The ashes of 1000 unknown victims.









Below:  The "Showers"








Below:  At the gates of Dachau