The story of Dachau, as told to tourists

Eight hundred thousand tourists now visit the former Dachau concentration camp each year. After their pilgrimage to Dachau, there are two favorite words that visitors typically use to describe their experience: "sobering" and "moving."

The typical tourist is a young student on a tour of Europe who has just arrived in Munich the day before and has spent the previous night visiting Bavaria's number one attraction - the Hofbräuhaus. Then it's on to the number two attraction - Dachau. The third big attraction in Bavaria is King Lugwig's castle, Neuschwanstein, which is next on the list after Dachau has been checked off.

The photo at the top of the page shows the gravel path from the bus stop to the gatehouse of the former camp. This is a new path that did not exist when the camp was in operation.

Dachau is a picturesque town, located 18 kilometers north of Munich; the town can be reached by a short train ride from Munich on the S-Bahn #2 line going towards Petershausen. From the Dachau station, tourists use their train ticket to take bus #726 or #724 to the former Dachau concentration camp which is now a Memorial Site.

Few visitors bother to tour the town, which is shown in the photo above. Those who do visit the town are still angry with the townspeople: One tourist wrote this about the town of Dachau on her blog:

I felt so many emotions today as I rode into town. I kept looking around at all the shops and beauty parlors and got angry. Why didn't they burn this place to the ground and salt the earth?? Didn't people know what went on here? I found out inside that when Dachau was liberated, the Americans marched the citizens of Dachau through to look at the piles of dead bodies and the living arrangements to see just what they had either been ignoring or were honestly unaware of.

In 2005, a new entrance to the Dachau Memorial Site was created on the south side of the Dachau complex, which includes the former concentration camp and what is left of the former SS Army Garrison and Training Center for concentration camp administrators, which the Dachau tour guides refer to as a "school of violence" or a "school of terror."

In May 2007, a new visitor's center with a cafeteria was under construction at the new tourist entrance. The cafeteria is now open and many visitors are critical of the fact that food is available just outside the former concentration camp. For years, it was thought that eating at the Memorial Site would be disrespectful to the dead. When I visited in May 2007, I saw tourists who had brought food with them to the camp and were munching on sandwiches or eating from plastic containers as they toured the site. I had to remove a food wrapper before taking a photo of the gas chamber.

The railroad station at Dachau is about two miles from the Memorial Site, but some tourists are critical of the McDonald's restaurant there because it is too close to the hallowed ground of the former camp.

At the entrance, visitors can rent a device for recorded information, which is available for self-guided tours. The recording cautions visitors that Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany and that the Nazi salute is forbidden.

Most visitors to Dachau arrive in groups and are escorted by a tour guide, who instructs them in the horrors suffered by the Dachau prisoners. The following quote is from a blog written by a visitor, whose tour guide, Steven, had researched Dachau for 15 years:

This was the prototype camp. It was here that the men who invented the idea of concentration camp and death camp turned their ideas to reality. They had a lust for cruelty. Even long after Hitler demanded an end to killing - the prisoners being needed for labor - the killing continued. And not in gas chambers. Dachau had them, but did not use them. The killing was done for sport. Guards could use any excuse they could invent to shoot someone. The most sickening thing was when a guard would take a prisoner to the camp boundary and throw their hat over the border. Should the prisoner fetch, they would be shot dead. Should they not fetch, they would be beaten either until dead, or until they would crawl battered and bloodied over the border hoping to be shot dead.

Visitors leave with the idea that the SS soldiers on the Dachau staff had no rules to govern their behavior and that there was a total lack of discipline for the SS men. They are not told about Dr. Georg Konrad Morgen, the SS judge who investigated all the camps and prosecuted 200 cases of murder and mistreatment of the prisoners. Five Commandants were arrested and two were executed after being convicted in Morgan's court, but Martin Gottfried Weiss, the commandant of Dachau, was given a good report by the prisoners.

To learn more about what it was like in the Dachau camp, read the pages on this web site about Dachau Life and particularly about the priests who were imprisoned at Dachau.

Young German students, who are required to take a tour of a concentration camp, also arrive in groups, escorted by their teachers. They look very subdued as they listen to their teacher's shameful account of the crimes committed by their great-grandparents.

Most students are apprehensive about visiting Dachau. They have studied the Holocaust in elementary school, and they arrive with pre-conceived notions. They are not disappointed; they learn that the Dachau concentration camp was even worse than they thought it was.

After a trip to Europe, which included a visit to Dachau, Naomi Spencer wrote this in an article for the Spring Arbor University newspaper:

On a rainy day, we go to Dachau concentration camp. While there, we run our hands across wooden bunk beds where emaciated bodies were stacked like cards. We walk through execution chambers where poison gasses streaming from showerheads ended the lives of human beings crowded like animals in cages; we see the nail marks on the walls. We see grass matted down from rivers of blood flowing out from human ovens.

The walls of the gas chamber are made of glazed brick and there were no fingernail scratches, as of May 2007, but they might have been added since then. There is no grass in front of the building with the "human ovens" but visitors see what they want to see.

The following quote is from A blogger's account of her Dachau tour:

The tour began outside the main gate. The gravel walkway is the same path that the prisoners were forced to walk as they were brought into the camp. She explained the role of Dachau and how it began. She also gave the history of how the village of Dachau was kept in the dark about what was really going on. Of course, near the end with liberation rapidly approaching, they were killing people as quickly as possible and the on site crematorium was not sufficient. So, they burned bodies day and night, and still had to create several mass graves in the surrounding area. After the detailed depiction, we all headed back through the gate and soberly made our way to the camp prison, the most feared building in the camp. This was where some of the most horrific torture took place. It was also where all of the priests were placed. They were forced into tiny cells, or worse, the standing cells. They were beaten, tortured, and often were brutally murdered. Sometimes, the guards simply gave the prisoner a length of rope and left them to kill themselves. If a guard was particularly blood thirsty, then they would tie their hands behind their back, then hang them from a pole for at least an hour. This dislocated the prisoners shoulders and, because they were worth nothing at all if they could not work, they were shot in the back of the neck only after the guards had had their fill. They were shot in the back of the neck because people survive being shot in the head, but not when their cv spine has been severed. Quite a few people, men and women, were crying at this point. I was worried about taking a tour, but my concerns were unwarranted. Everyone was respectful.

The Nazis kept meticulous records at the concentration camps, but not meticulous enough. According to a report made by the International Tracing Service of the Red Cross at Arolson, Germany in 1977, there were 31,951 recorded deaths at the main Dachau camp during the 12 years that the camp was in existence. Today the staff at the Memorial Site tells visitors that 41,566 is a conservative estimate of the number of deaths at Dachau.

At the end of the gravel entrance path, visitors turn to the right and enter through the original gate into the former camp, shown in the photo below. The railroad tracks on the right hand side of the photo were narrow gauge tracks used for carrying supplies to the camp. The prisoners arrived at the Dachau train station and walked to the camp.

The Dachau concentration camp was originally set up in an abandoned factory, but in 1936, the camp was redesigned and the gate house shown in the photo above was built. The old factory buildings were gradually torn down and replaced by wooden barracks. The new camp was completed in 1938.

Visitors marvel at the concrete-lined gravel beds, shown in the photo above, that denote the location of the former barracks and the two rows of poplar trees which line the Dachau camp road. The tourists are not told that the original trees, planted by the prisoners in 1938, were removed when Dachau was turned into a camp for 5,000 German refugees in 1948; the present trees were planted in the 1980ies and some have been replaced since then.

Originally, there were flower beds at both ends of each barrack. The area around the crematorium was originally landscaped like a garden and there were even fresh flowers in a vase in the undressing room for the gas chamber when the American liberators arrived.

The vast field of coarse gravel, which visitors see when they enter the camp, was added when the Memorial Site was constructed. This space was originally broken up by paved areas and paths lined with flower beds.

The tourists are told that there was a "sick parade" each evening on the field of gravel, shown in the photo above, where the sick and the infirm were beaten and ridiculed.

Some tour guides tell visitors that incoming prisoners at Dachau were tattooed with a number on their arm, although this was only done at Auschwitz.

The barracks in the Dachau concentration camp were not burned to the ground by the Nazis, as some tourists mistakenly think, but instead were turned into tar paper shacks, divided into tiny apartments, which were occupied from 1948 to 1964 by 5,000 ethnic Germans who were expelled from their homes in the Sudetenland after the war. The 2,000 German refugees, who were still there in 1964, were thrown out of their homes again so that a Memorial Site could be constructed in 1965.

The former Dachau concentration camp now has Memorials to the Catholics, Protestants and Jews who suffered and died there. The photo above shows the Jewish Memorial.

The Jewish Memorial, designed by Frankfurt architect Hermann Zwi Guttmann, is located approximately 40 yards east of the Catholic Memorial. In the background of the photo above is a Carmelite convent that was built before the Jewish Memorial was added. Many visitors are critical of the fact that the Catholic and Protestant memorials have the best locations, in the mistaken belief that Dachau was mainly a camp for Jews.

At the end of the gravel beds which denote the location of the former barracks, and directly across from the building where the gas chamber is located, is a Protestant Church where services are currently held on Sundays. The steps were designed to have no right angles because this would be a reminder of the hated Nazi ideal of order and the precisely measured right-angled barracks. The most famous Protestant at Dachau was the Reverend Martin Niemöller who was convicted of treason by the Nazis.

Arbeit Macht Frei gate

Crematorium & gas chamber

Dachau Museum

A blogger's account of her Dachau tour - External link

A Reporter's account of his Dachau visit - External link

Guided tour of Dachau - External link

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This page was last updated on September 5, 2008