In July 2017, I had the chance to visit Dachau concentration camp when I was travelling in Munich. It was a memorable , a somber visit as I learned a lot about the world war history particularly during the time of Nazi occupation which has influenced the world we are are living in today. The buildings, the land , the whole camp site brought out such cold, unfortunate, tormented atmosphere and everything took place there was clearly depicted in the museum and guided tours.
For those who are not familiar with what a concentration camp is and its story during the Nazi occupation, here is a brief introduction: It was initially the camp built for the purpose to accommodate political prisoners when the Third Reich was founded in 1933. Adolf Hitler was the chancellor of this Reich and the leader of The National Socialist party. In the beginning of his dictatorship, things were settled to improve Hitler's power in Germany by killing the leader of the SA (Sturmabteilung), Ernst Röhm, and many of Hitler's political opponents in the movement called the Röhm Putsch. This marked the rise of the SS (Schutzstaffel) and the Gestapo. Three years later, Nuremberg Laws were made which intensified the racial discrimination between the German and the Jews. The Jews in most European countries no longer held rights for Reich citizenship and they were arrested and sent to the concentration camps. In 1939, More of these camps were built in all over Germany, Austria, and Poland, to prison the Jews where they were forced to work, tortured, killed, and treated inhumanely. Most of them were located in the outskirt of a town, or in a small village, the local people had no idea such place exist and they were not allowed to enter or even to find out what was in there. There were more than 40,000 concentration camps built across Europe, some of them also served as extermination camps, and most of them were concentrated around Germany, Poland, and Austria as you can see in the map below.
Source: https://www.thoughtco.com/concentration-and-death-camps-map-1779690
No clear reason as to why Hitler hate the Jews so much, out of so many race exist in this world. From my research on few holocaust related literatures , the root simple reason was believed to be ENVY. According to the book "Why the Germans? Why the Jews?: Envy, Race Hatred, and the Prehistory of the Holocaust" by Götz Aly, what drove the German majority to envy the success of the Jewish minority was the fact that the Germans were about to establish social equality and to promote even wealth distribution among the people in Germany. However, the presence of the increasing number of highly skilled and educated Jews threatened them - so nothing actually related to their religion.
Another best part of my visit was reading many stories and memoirs of holocaust survivors and listening to their recording tape about their experience in the camp. I could feel from their voice that remembering, revisiting the time of their life between 1939-1945 was the last thing they wanted to do. Until now, people still couldn't believe how could human beings did such terrible things to other human beings. But of course, not all Germans are Nazi. It was just a propaganda that affected some people.
Dachau concentration camp was built in 1933 and was the first prisoner camp in which the design was then used in the building of other concentration camps.
Visiting Dachau while you are in Munich is actually very easy. The easiest way (hassle free) is by joining a group tour. There are several groups tours in Munich available for this and the price you pay is already including the train ticket and the tours. I would recommend the Sandeman Tour : http://www.neweuropetours.eu/munich/en/home , or the Radius tour : http://radiustours.com/en/.
If you want to go by yourself (feeling a bit adventurous), it is also really easy and you can save some bucks! All you need is a day train ticket of Munich XXL, because Dachau is located one zone away from Munich City, and this ticket also allows you to go back to Munich and anywhere within the XXL region (green shade in map) for the whole day until 6 am the next day. The train that goes to Dachau are the S2 line towards Altomunster or Petershausen. It takes about 1-1.5 hours to get there from Munich.
A you enter the from gate of the Dachau concentration camp, there will be the front building on the left, where the Visitor Centre, information, ticket desk, library and cafeteria are. Just proceed to this building and line up to get the audio guide if you want to do the self service tour. For guided tour, you may need to check their schedule. The self tour is pretty fun too. For a student, I paid EUR 2.50 for the entrance + the audio guide + map.
After exiting the building, just proceed to the part where the actual camp was. You will discover the following building if you follow the number in the map :
There were of course a lot of things happened during this time and just like how we human live today, the holocaust victims and survivors also had their own story to share; from the tales of their survival, romance, friendship, family, all kinds of memorable life events that took place in their life. Here I recommend some books and movies about the Holocaust story that I have enjoyed so far and they helped me learn about the history.
That was all about my experience in Dachau!
Please let me know if you have any other recommendations, or if you'd like to share stories of your visit, any information on concentration camps, feel free to post here and message me!