Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
AROUND MUNICH
Dachau
08131 / POP 42,500
'There is a path to freedom. Its milestones are: obedience, honesty, cleanliness, sobriety,
hard work, discipline, sacrifice, truthfulness and love of thy Fatherland'
Inscription from
the roof of the concentration camp at Dachau.
Dachau was the Nazis' first concentration camp, built by Heinrich Himmler in March 1933
to house political prisoners. All in all it 'processed' more than 200,000 inmates, killing
between 30,000 and 43,000, and is now a haunting memorial that will stay long in the
memory. Expect to spend two to three hours here to fully absorb the exhibits. Note that
children under 12 may find the experience too disturbing.
Officially called the
KZ-Gedenstätte Dachau
(Dachau Memorial Site;
www.kz-
gedenkstaette-dachau.de
;
Alte Römerstrasse 75; admission free; 9am-5pm daily)
, start
at the new visitors centre which houses a bookshop, cafe and tour booking desk where you
can pick up an audioguide (€3.50). It's on your left as you enter the main gate. Two-and-a-
half-hour tours (€3) also run from here Tuesday to Sunday at 11am and 1pm.
You pass into the compound itself through the Jourhaus, originally the only entrance. Set
in wrought iron, the chilling slogan
'Arbeit Macht Frei'
(Work Sets You Free) hits you at
the gate.
The
museum
is at the southern end of the camp. Here a 22-minute English- language
documentary runs at 10am, 11.30am, 12.30pm, 2pm and 3pm and uses mostly post-libera-
tion footage to outline what took place here. Either side of the small cinema extends an ex-
hibition relating the camp's harrowing story, from relatively orderly prison for religious in-
mates, leftists and criminals to overcrowded concentration camp racked by typhus, and its
eventual liberation by the US Army in April 1945.
Disturbing displays include photographs of the camp, its officers and prisoners (all male
until 1944), and horrifying 'scientific experiments' carried out by Nazi doctors. Other ex-
hibits include a whipping block, a chart showing the system of prisoner categories (Jews,
homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Poles, Roma and other 'asocial' types) and documents
on the persecution of 'degenerate' authors banned by the party. There's also a lot of inform-
ation on the rise of the Nazis and other concentration camps around Europe, a scale model
of the camp at its greatest extent and numerous uniforms and everyday objects belonging to
inmates and guards.
