Day 3

Gluten tag,

Today we visited the Dachau Memorial. Dachau (pronounced “Da How”) is a beautiful little town, now really a suburb of Munich. It seems to be a similar relationship as Cambridge is to Hamilton; a lot of the people who live in Dachau work in Munich.

Back in the early 1930’s, after Adolf Hitler became the dictator of Germany, Dachau was chosen to be the location for the very first concentration camp. Dachau was used as the prototype for all of the other concentration camps the Nazis built, and it was also where many of the SS soldiers were trained before being posted to other concentration camps.

The camps were originally built as “re-education” camps. Places where Hitler and his cronies could lock up political opponents, agitators and people they generally didn’t like.

Dachau was designed to hold 6,000 prisoners at any one time. By the end of World War II it held 30,000 prisoners. The crazy thing was that most of these prisoners were German - Hitler locked locked up many thousands of his own people.

While Dachau Memorial is free for anyone to attend, we elected to take a guided tour. Our tour guide was a nice German man who explained how he was personally ashamed of this period of German history. His objective for hosting tours of Dachau is to try and make as many people aware as possible of the truth so an to ensure that this piece of history cannot be repeated.

The memorial site is huge, and yet it is relatively small compared to the original size of the camp.

The camp was designed using the clever engineering for which Germany is famous. This picture shows a guard tower, and the next picture the design of the fence line. There is a grass strip, then a steep sided moat that would have been filled with water, then a fence that was not only made of barbed wire, but the wire was also electrified. If a prisoner so much as stepped onto the grass, the guards at the top of the towers without hesitation, would open fire with machine guns. Anyone trying to escape would have to cross the grass, cross the moat, and scale the electric barbed wire fence while

under fire from the machine guns.

200,000 people went through Dachau during the thirteen years it was in operation. All but 4 of them were men. Only one prisoner ever escaped alive.

Dachau was not an extermination camp like Auschwitz; it was a work camp, where prisoners were worked very hard. In many cases they were worked to death. So there was a crematorium on site, and this worked long hours to dispose of the dead bodies.

Work was hard, the conditions very harsh, and the food inadequate for survival. When the US Army liberated the camp at the end of World War II the average weight of each prisoner was 36kg. Barely skin and bone. By comparison, a slim and healthy Koro weighs about 86kg, give or take a few beers and packs of chippies.

The original barracks have all been demolished, but a replica of two of the barracks has been built, including the bunks. By the end of 1945 each building housed about 2,000 men, which would have meant several men would have to share each “bed”.

It is not a nice place to visit at all, but important to see what some people are capable of. And as our guide kept saying, we all have a responsibility to keep our eyes and ears open to ensure it never happens again.

A funny moment was near the end of the tour when our guide was explaining Hitler’s catch phrase during his election campaign was “Let’s make Germany great again”. There were a lot if Americans in our tour party, and they all gasped in horror, because Donald Trump’s catch cry during his election campaign was “Let’s make

America great again”.

It had been another hot day in Munich, so we had a beer as we walked back from the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) to our hotel. For dinner we decided to try Andy's Krablergarten, which is famous for it’s schnitzel.

Grandma and Koro each ordered a Viennese Schnitzel. We should have ordered just one to share, and we probably still wouldn’t have finished it. The dinner plates it was served on were huge, but as big as they were, the schnitzel was still hanging over the sides. Uncle Steve would have been very happy if he had been with us.

Manawa and Hannah, who work at Office Products Depot, are both working hard to get slim and trim for summer. Before we left,

Manawa and Hannah told us that we will not recognise them when we return, because they will both be so slim and trim. Well, Manawa and Hannah may not recognise Koro when he gets back either, because he will have had too much schnitzel and beer.

Love to you all from Grandma and Koro and Buzzy Bee.