PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Many who have read my beer reviews will be expecting this to be a celebration of the Oktoberfest or a review of the many wondrous beer gardens in Munich. However, I want to take pause from my normal drunken revelry to write something serious here. This review is about the Dachau Concentration Camp outside of Munich.

On my last visit to Munich I took a respite from the beer gardens to observe this camp. It is easily accessible by train and bus. You take a train to Dachau and then board a bus that will take you directly to the Concentration Camp. It is an eerie experience but I felt it was worthwhile to go and to learn about this dark period in human history.

They have recreated the barracks where the prisoners were housed. The bunks were right on top of each other. There were no private bathrooms or shower facilities. It was disconcerting to view the toilets used by prisoners. Although many of the prisoners were forced to use buckets that also served as water buckets to drink from. Showers generally meant being hosed down. It was a bit disquieting although being empty and sanitized you don't get to fully feel the squalor in which these prisoners lived. They have many photographs on the wall. There are captions that explain a lot of the horrid conditions in which these prisoners lived.

You can then take a walk to the Crematorium. This is also very unsettling. One person claimed to detect a gaseous smell. This was probably a psychosomatic effect as they never actually gassed anyone at Dachau. There was always the looming threat of this but the condemned persons were going to be sent on to Auschwitz. It is eerie to walk through this camp and realize the incredible evil that once took place here.

What I found to be the hardest part of the camp was the factory which has been converted into a museum. It is a walk through history of the camp. Here is where the horror of Nazi Germany really sinks in. There are portraits and accounts of the torture and medical experiments that can be overwhelming. Seeing skeletal figures or people with limbs detached is certainly unpleasant. It was also horrible to view the mass graves with hundreds of dead bodies. I had to rush outside to compose myself as I kept being confronted with one horror after another.

This is an experience that is very uncomfortable but I feel that everyone should learn about these horrors. It was only ten deutschmarks when I was there which equals out to about six dollars (depending on the exchange rate). note: Germany has adopted the Euro since my visit. This is something that I would recommend everyone checking out if they are ever in Munich.