Munich -- Part 2

A half hour train ride from Munich is the town of Dachau. If that sounds familiar, it's because the town was the location of one of the major concentration camps during the Nazi reign from 1933-1945.

This plan shows what the Dachau camp looked like at its "height." The barracks where the detainees were held are closest to the and the SS homes are further back.

This map shows all the the camps and subcamps that were run by the Nazi's.

This index shows that not all concentration camps were death camps. In fact, very few were death camps. Dachau was a work camp, meaning that detainees were brought here essentially as slaves and their worked benefited the Nazi state and regime.

Auschwitz, you'll see has a "V", which indicates it was a camp where prisoners were sent to their deaths.

A prisoner could be brought to Dachau and then sent to one of many subcamps in the area. These other subcamps could be factories or for any reason and were held as few as 20 detainees.

The majority of prisoners entered the Dachau camp through this entryway.

They would see this, which means "Work makes you free."

Each and every morning and evening the prisoners would have to line up on this large area (we're seeing only half of it in this photo) to be accounted for. In 1933-35, the camp had some 10,000 prisoners, but by the mid-1940's Dachau had some 60,000 persons.

During roll call, those that incurred infractions (at the beginning for things as minor as not making their bed) would be publicly whipped on this table or one like it.

One of seven watchtowers that are along the wall of the camp.

In the twelve years of camp, only one man escaped. There was a moat on both sides of the barbed wire fence.

Here is the remains of one of the shower rooms. This room is now in the museum.

In the years after the camp was liberated, the barracks were torn down. Here is the footprint of the 28 barracks. In 1965, a committee of Dachau survivors had two of the barracks rebuilt,

Inside the barracks, one can see what the living conditions were like.

Can you imagine what these would have been like with some 2,000 people sharing them?

One of the many sculptures that serve memory of the atrocities that happened on this site.

Those who were brought here were not just Jews. Everyone who was brought there was given a sign to wear on their clothing indicating why there were at Dachau. In the beginning, most were political prisoners and they were given red triangles. Criminals were given a color, Jews, were given the star of David, but if they were also here for another reason, their star had two colors. Gypsies and Jehovah's Witnesses (because they refused to take an oath to the Nazi's) were here as well. Homosexuals were given pink triangles, which is the origin of the pink triangle of the gay rights movement.

Although not a death camp, there was a crematorium on site.

The crematorium was used for those who passed away at Dachau. But there were times when it was used simply to put some detainees to death. It was not, however, used for mass killings. The SS kept records and with the discovery of mass graves, it is estimated that some 41,000 people died or were killed while at Dachau.

This was the disinfecting room. Notice the hooks for their clothes.

This is the entrance to the gassing room, although it says over the door that it's a bathing room.

The gassing room.

The ovens. In the later years, due to coal shortages, these ovens weren't used so bodies were dumped into mass graves.

On the other end of the Dachau camp, here is the housing for the SS troops and officers.

This is Roland and Henry looking sheepish as they admit that their iPhone GPS systems directed us to the wrong train station. Sometimes....

However, with every detour there is a silver lining. We saw this spray painter at work. You never seen any graffiti in Germany and here was some being created.