You have heard us rave about Sandman’s Tours before, well here we ago again. These tours are in major cities all over the EU. Most of the city tours a free, but they offer bike tours at a low cost and in some areas have tours for specific attractions. In Versailles they offer a tour for example. I think one of the most serious tours they offer however is of the Dachau Concentration camp. This tour leaves the main square of Munich and for a little over 20€ a person, it includes the train and bus ride to get to the camp. Upon arrival, you take a tour of the camp which covers all the highlights. If I did it again, I’d get the travel info from the guide and make my own way back to Munich because then we could have stayed and spent time combing through all the reading and such that was offered. However, the guide did tell us about the book he used to learn everything and it was 10€ including a cd and you could buy it at the camp. The tour itself is about 3 hours long and then there is also travel time.
This experience is life changing. It is sobering and not something to do alone. I am literally crying tears as I write this simple blog because it brings me back to the feelings I had walking through the camp. It brought to life, the pain and suffering and injustice that occurred and it made my heart physically ache in my chest. It was however the single most important experience of my life and I will never forget the way it felt to see the this place of terror.
It is not something for young kids and I found it frustrating that people brought their small children because they were running around and untamed. However, for a high schooler, this would be a prime example of how living in Europe is living in history and I highly recommend everyone does this with their teenager. We stayed at Edelweiss and they do offer child care at the resort.
For info on the tour, please click here.
Click to enlarge photos.
At the entrance
The gate into the camp translates “work makes free” (Arbeit macht frei)
The art was added after and represents barbed wire and human bodies. Many killed themselves on the wire in suicide to escape the life they were forced into.
The active years of the camp
A toilet in one of the barracks where people were put in small rooms and punished for days on end.
The dorms were actually destroyed by angry American soldiers before the prisoners wisely stopped them from destroying the whole camp by telling them that it needed to be preserved so that the future generations would learn from it and never forget the lesson. The dorms were then rebuilt by the prisoners to ensure that history lived on.
The crematory
The gas chamber. While this was not a death camp, it did have a gas chamber. It is unknown if 10 died or 10000 in this room as it was not recorded.
Here At Gk 