It was a rainy day in Munich. I went to Marienplatz to try to find a couple of things to bring home, and to go back to Asam church and take some good photos. Unfortunately the church was closed to the public and I couldn't find the things I wanted to bring home so it was a bit of a bust. I popped into the Munich flagship Apple Store. Every flagship has a really cool architectural design feature - in Munich it is a floating glass spiral staircase. For "lunch" I treated myself to a latte and strudel with vanilla sauce. YUM!

I boarded a train to Dachau, the concentration camp. What an incredibly somber and powerful experience. Dachau is a very important camp because it was the the model camp, used as a training grounds for SS. The first group of SS officers were groomed to be leaders of other camps, learning the cruel "Dachau way" of treating prisoners and conducting interrogations.

Although it was empty, it was so easy to imagine people being herded through the gates and marched into the yard for roll call. When I walked through the metal gate with the famous inscription, just as over 200,000 prisoners did, my eyes teared up thinking about how terrified and alone these people must have felt.

The first section of the tour was in the bunker, a jail used to interrogate and hold prisoners. It was a cold and rainy day, which really added to the sadness of the grounds and especially these cells which were very cold and damp. Toward the end of the war the cells were divided into four "standing cells" that were about 2'6" square, preventing prisoners from sitting down. People were held in these cells for up to 72 hours.

The living quarters were destroyed after the war so they recreated them, showing the original conditions when the camp opened vs. the end of the war when the camp held 10x the number of people it was built for. Up to 2,000 people had to share 11 toilets and two sinks.

The last place I visited was Baracke X which housed the gas chamber and the newer crematorium, and the older, smaller crematorium that was located a short distance away. These buildings were removed a bit from the rest of the camp. Obviously this was the most troubling part of the tour. On either side of the incinerators were rooms to hold the bodies before they were burned. There is no evidence that the gas chamber was used for mass deaths, but it was used for individuals. The room was disguised as “showers” and equipped with fake shower spouts to mislead the victims and prevent them from refusing to enter the room. During a period of 15 to 20 minutes up to 150 at a time could be suffocated to death through prussic acid poison gas (Zyklon B).

After the tour, I went back to Munich for dinner.