The Great European Road Trip: Day 2

We began this morning with a typical light breakfast in our little hotel in Dinkelsbuhl--cold cuts, bread, yogurt, some muesli, and for the kids, a boiled egg.  Our hostess was incredibly kind and prepared both tea and hot chocolate for us.  Then, we went out on the town for a quick walkabout, some more hot chocolate and crepes (didn't we just have breakfast?) and visiting a few shops.  The girls found a store that sells traditional Bavarian peasant girls' dresses and both wanted one, but they were a little pricy.  Besides, we couldn't have gotten them dresses without getting AAB some lederhosen and he wasn't about to have of that!

The entry building where the SS offices were.  The gate is there in the center.

Mid morning, we left Dinkelsbuhl and headed south.  The day turned more somber, almost as if in anticipation of our destination:  the Dachau concentration camp memorial.  We were a little hesitant to take the kids there, especially AAB and Swiss Sis, but they're studying WWII and we thought this would be a visit they would never forget.  And it's a lesson never to forget as well.

The first thing prisoners saw on the entry gate

It was about 36 degrees when we arrived at the visitors' center and bought tickets for a guided tour.  Our referent, Adam, was actually Australian and has been living in Munich for two years and giving tours of the site for about a year and a half.

Opened in 1933 shortly after Hitler's rise to power as a site mainly to house political rivals, Dachau was the first prison camp and would eventually become a model for the myriad camps throughout Europe.  By the time the Allies liberated the camp at the end of April 1945, over 200,000 people from 34 nations around Europe had at one time interred there and of those, 41,000 were murdered or died from disease, malnutrition, and exposure.  Originally designed to house about 6,100 prisoners, when the Allies liberated the camp, there were about 32,000.

A map of the extent of the camp system.  Each dot represents some type of camp--the bold black ones were the major concentration camps.  Others were smaller work camps, political camps, and even youth camps.

We learned quite a few things we hadn't known before:

• The camp didn't really start out with Jews in large numbers.  Inmates were mostly political prisoners who had opposed the rise of the Nazis.



Two of the reproduced barracks buildings.  There would have been 30 of these extending down the avenue with the trees.



One of the memorial sculptures.



Close-up of the sculpture.

• Despite the number of inmates, there were only about 50 SS guards.  We were really surprised by this.  Order and discipline were maintained through discipline, torture, and terror, with many inmates actually working for the Nazis in exchange for better living conditions.  Inmates often administered the punishment.  Only one person ever escaped and that was in about 1936.  But the SS training facility next door was a discouraging factor.



View from the barracks.

• As Germany began to lose the war, prisoners were treated 'better,' albeit marginally.  They needed to be used as forced labor and so there were fewer executions of able-bodied laborers.  In fact, the first commandant of the camp was arrested and ordered to stand trial for executing prisoners.  Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, conveniently lost the paperwork and so the officer was never tried.
• Prisoners were given identifiers as part of different groups:  dissidents, criminals, Jehovah's Witnesses (they refused to fight in the war or work in arms factories and so were traitors), "asocials," homosexuals, and of course, Jews.  The identifications helped foster distrust and hatred among the groups in the prison and helped maintain order.
• The prison camp network was much more extensive than we had ever imagined.  Many know the name of Dachau and of course, Auschwitz, but there must have been hundreds of camps, large and small, from Paris to Poland.
• Tattooing prisoners with numbers was done at Auschwitz.  There's no evidence of it at Dachau and apparently the practice wasn't widespread.
• The crematorium was separate from the camp and was worked by a group of prisoners.  After 7 months, they were killed and a new group was brought in.  Thus, no one ever went back into the camp and liberated prisoners didn't know what was happening over in the crematorium area.  
• Today, the city of East Dachau has grown up around the camp site, but at the time, the camp was about 5 km from the population center.  When the allies arrived, the townspeople claimed they had no idea what was going there.  Quite likely, they didn't.
• The camp was actually used after war.  First for German POWs as they awaited trial for war crimes.  Later, for German refugees who returned to Germany from captured lands like Czechoslovakia.

Down the length of the camp.

We were all very moved by the visit.  SweetSwissTeen hung through the tour, but AAB and SwissSis needed to bail about 2/3 of the way through.  As SwissSis told me, "Dad, I know bad things happened there--I don't need to see it."

It's hard to believe how brutal man can be to his fellow man.  It's one thing to visit the Tower of London and hear about medieval torture.  It's another thing entirely to realize that this happened only 70 years ago.  And conditions like this are still manifest all over the world today.

It's particularly poignant to have visited on the eve of Easter.  If anything can help us understand why we need a Savior, Dachau can and does.  Man has not 'gotten better' or 'evolved' over time.  On the contrary, we've come up with ways to kill each other that are more horrific and more efficient.

The famous saying by the Jews is "Never Again."  Yet there are those today who would deny the Holocaust ever happened.  And while the Holocaust killed six million Jews, or one in three, the Scriptures tell us that it will happen again.  Jeremiah speaks of the time of Jacob's Trouble and Daniel tells us:

And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a na-tion even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. - Daniel 12:1

But while the first Holocaust took one on three Jews, Zechariah suggests that the next one will take two in three:

Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the LORD of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones. And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the LORD, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God. - Zechariah 13:7-9

Tomorrow, we celebrate a risen Savior.  He is our true hope and the light of the world.  He came unto His own, but His own received Him not.  But to everyone who did receive Him, He gave the power to become sons of God, not of blood or the will of the flesh or the will of man, but of God. 

If you are a Christian, Rejoice!  He is Risen indeed!  If you're not, there is no better time to investigate the truth claims of Christianity and settle the question of your eternity.

Happy Easter!

The Unidentified Prisoner.
"To honor the Dead.  To warn the Living."