different names for the same thing: Trains of No Return

This is Dave taking over again. Wendy is suffering from a migraine so I’m doing blog duty again.
We had a goal to get out the door early today and did OK. The weather has been very Seattle-like. Random days are sunny, random days are rainy, but most days are a weird mix of light drizzle with breaks of sun. Friday played out like that. Wendy went running in the morning when it was drizzling the hardest. She got back and everybody got ready for our big day event: Dachau concentration camp.
We took the normal U-bahn to Marienplatz. Our plan was to switch over to the S-bahn to Dachau. I noticed it was 10:56, so we rushed up to see the glockenspiel. It was showering but there was still quite the crowd. It was cute and fun to watch, and I’m glad I saw it. Maybe a bit slow for today’s generation, though. You can watch a generic youtube video here if you’re interested. The fun part for me was being in Munich and watching it with a ton of other people in the rain.
We got back in the station and headed out. I love the German rail system. Clean, organized, easy to figure out, smooth, quiet, not crowded. Overall a great way to travel. I’m guessing it was a 40 minute train ride to the city. Once we got there, it was about a 10 minute bus ride from the train station to the camp. The bus was packed with all the train folks. I met a group from the Chicago area on the bus. It was their 40th year from high school, and they were traveling with an exchange student (except that day they were on their own). We compared notes on places to go. They encouraged me to go to the eagles nest (Hitler’s bunker) when we go to Salzburg. I know Wendy wants more Sound of Music than Hitler on that trip, so we’ll see if there’s time.
We got to the camp and got the audio guides (that’s my personal thing. I love them. Makes the experience anywhere we go much more interesting). We were worried about Mali because the recommendations are for 12 and up only, but it turns out she did fine. There are some grim images, and the documentary is tough in some parts, but it’s also handled in a way that doesn’t sensationalize things.
At first we toured through the museum. It was designed for visitors to go through like someone entering the camp would experience it (room where you strip and hand over your clothes and possessions, room where you are showered and shaved, etc…). One of the most interesting things for me were displays where they had pictures of prisoners before and after (or during) their stay in the camp. All the prisoners tend to look alike (intentional stripping of identity) so showing the pictures before really emphasized the individuality of the people that went through there.
I was really surprised at the level of respect while we were there. Most times you could hear a pin drop, and there were a fair amount of people there (the camp can hold quite a few people). I expected some goofy teenagers or general morons that you get in any large group of people doing something disrespectful, but there was none of that. Another thing that I noticed is nobody had their picture taken with something. During this whole trip, it’s been funny to me to watch someone stand right in front of an amazing work of art (nearly blocking it) and get their picture taken. Beyond that, people will line up to get their picture taken by something that doesn’t really mean anything (or have much artistic merit). At the concentration camp, everybody was taking pictures, but nobody was having their picture taken. It makes sense. Just an interesting bit of human behavior to me.
There is a documentary they show in multiple languages, and we caught the English one at 2pm. It covers some of the content in the museum, but it was interesting to see live footage of things instead of pictures. At the start there were three boys (late teens or early twenties) joking around. 2 minutes in the entire room was dead silent. It was as quite as I’ve ever heard with that large of a group of people.
We were starving and headed over to the cafeteria. Once again, it was decent cafeteria food, but cafeteria food. I got wiener schnitzel, which seemed a lot like chicken fried steak (only pork instead of chicken). Kids stayed with the old standby, curry wurst. Mali’s stomach had been giving her problems, so Wendy and Mali decided to head home at that point. Hayley, Dillon and I went back to explore the grounds.
There’s a large artistic monument right outside the museum. My favorite part was the ‘Never Again’ plaque written in multiple languages. There’s the ashes of an unknown prisoner at the base.
They had two barracks still standing that you could walk through. That really drove home the living conditions for me. They were set up for three different time periods of the prison (early thirties, late thirties, and forties). The camp was designed to hold about 6,000 and they said at the day of liberation there were over 30,000 prisoners. The barracks showed it. They were three level bunk beds crammed into a tiny space. There was no separation for individuals. They slept head to toe. The audio guide talked about the insane rules for making your bed. It really hit me the misery of just living there (outside of the fear of death and starvation).
We walked the length of the camp. At the end there were some religious monuments which were nicely done. The path then went to the left. That took us to the crematorium and gas chamber.
If you see pictures of bodies in a room in a massive pile, it is probably the Dachau crematorium. Walking into that room did not give me (or the kids) a good feeling at all. Just miserable and sad. Apparently the Americans who liberated the camp made the people living nearby come and see the crematorium and the bodies stacked up. I didn’t know that before I came.
The gas chamber was spooky, too. The one at Dachau was never put into operation. It was still striking to me that it was a room designed and built to kill people in volume. It wasn’t a room that was adapted. Some engineer and architect had to think through the issues, design the room, and then build it. They had defiantly thought things through (where the gas comes in, how to check to make sure everyone is dead, how to quickly ventilate the room, fake shower heads to make people think it was ok to go in, etc…). It was just really sad to me as an engineer to see the thought and design go into something so obviously bad.
The three of us walked around the grounds after that. There were two mass graves (over 1,000 people buried in each) just outside the crematorium. They had also marked places where firing squads were regularly set up.
One additional thing I learned is after the liberation they had to keep the camp quarantined (raging medical problems mainly cholera). A few hundred people died after the liberation mostly from disease. Some died just trying to move to a normal diet. I can’t imagine being an officer in the army, finding this camp, and then having the responsibility for handling that mess. What experience could you draw upon to know how to fix it? It had to be absolutely shocking.
The camp closed at 5, so Dillon, Hayley and I headed out. It was starting to rain again, and you can only handle that heavy of a topic for so long. We trained back to home without anything eventful.
Wendy and I went out shopping for a bit while the kids hung at home. They were all tired of eating out, so they asked us to cook dinner at home. We got stuff for dinner that night and dinner on Sunday. It was good to eat at home. Hayley is really looking forward to eating at home when we get back. She’s tired of eating out, and when we eat at home she says we eat like ‘missionaries.’ There is some truth to that (since it’s often spaghetti, hamburgers, etc…) Wendy is a great cook so the kids are spoiled, and it’s hard to cook fancy when you’re in a place for two weeks because you don’t have the ingredients (and it costs time and money to get them all).
We went to the Häagen-Dazs a half block away for desert. I believe they are an American company, so it’s just funky to eat there. Fortunately, there were no pontificating weirdos that night, so we enjoyed our ice cream in relative peace. However, a guy playing an accordion did start heading our way looking for money, so we left a bit early. I’ll tell ya, I won’t miss people constantly hitting me up for money once we get back. I actually enjoy the talented classical music people that play nice and mellow music, but the electric guitar next to my head on the train, the accordion when I’m trying to eat, and the scam people just get old after a while.
Rand over. All in all, it was a good day. We learned a ton. It was heavy, but well worth the experience.
Dillon’s camera has the bulk of the pictures, and he and Wendy are in bed, so we’ll have to add some more later. Below is what I’ve got on the computer right now.