After our usual breakfast we caught a Train to Salzburg and then to Munich and then to dachau. From there, we took a bus to the concentration camp. This was very solemn and exhausting. I've always read so much and learned so much about the war and the camps. But there is nothing like actually seeing it before your eyes. We entered through a bunker first where they kept all the high end prisoners in cells. These prisoners were usually priests or people who took opposite political stances. This was less of a museum and more just for us to observe the building and environment and to read about a few of the prisoners lives and the brutality and torture they sometimes endured. The bunker was where a lot of the ss hung around and contained a lot of large rooms. There was also one long hallway with cell after cell. These were very small rooms with nothing in them. There were a few rooms that used to contain little boxed in areas so the prisoners couldn't sit or lay down. These were removed by the liberating soldiers so we didn't actually see them but reading about them just brought so much anger. They just piled on the cruelty as much as they could. Looking down the very very long hallway filled with cell door after door, just made me realize the number of prisoners they had there and I hadn't even reached the 30 barracks yet where the rest of the people were imprisoned. I thought there were a lot of people held in just that one building so I wasn't prepared for the back portion of the camp later. After the bunker, we went through the museum. It had sections labeled with numbers. I went through about 8 or 9 of them. It started off as a timeline and then history of what led to the Second World War. Then it moved to the creation of the camps and the false propaganda. The next sections were about the people that were taken to the camps and the process of entering a camp. The last few sections I had time to look at were about the cruelty and life (if you can even call it that) in the camps. Before I could finish, there was a film showing at about 2, so I watched that with some more of our group. That was very graphic and emotional. It was like a shortened version of the museum. Moving from the beginning of the war, to the camps, to liberation. If you are a crier, that would've done you in. Seeing the real moving picture of those subject to cruelty, the piles of hundreds of people, watching as other human beings walked past the dead bodies without blinking an eye. It just makes you ask so many questions. How can people who are made the same as you and me be so heartless and cruel? So evil towards other people. If you don't think Satan is that bad, then think again. Just read some accounts of the holocaust and you'll be reminded that he is no small annoyance. He is EVIL. He is worse than any person that committed those terrible crimes at that time. The film was the hardest to watch up to that point. We had church in a chapel at the very back of the camp so we had to walk though the whole camp to get there. We walked past all the old barrack locations. There were 2 standing barracks and then 28 rock beds where the barracks used to stand. We had to walk almost a mile to get past all the barracks. There were trees lining the road that leads down the middle of all the barracks. The same trees I saw in the film but they were much shorter in the film. Those same trees I walked past have seen so much cruelty, pain, and suffering. I felt like they were mourning trees, worn out from the sadness that surrounds them. Worship was very emotional. To worship our God in a location of such sadness and evil was moving like no other. We sang "Here in this Place." These lyrics, "We offer Him our praise; For the King of kings and the joy He brings Is here, He is here in this place," made me think about the lack of joy they probably felt. It was moving to think that our God was there in that dark place even then. I'm sure it didn't feel like it to most of them because I think I would struggle with feeling His presence if I was there. Which honestly is so hard to even imagine putting yourself in their place. I know He was there though because it is difficult to believe surviving through those horrid years at all. Yet, there were so many amazing surviving stories. He was there and still is. After our worship, I hadn't seen everything yet so I stayed another hour with a smaller group of people. I looked at the gas chamber and crematorium which were located through a gate and across a stream in the back of the camp. The location hints at how they were trying to hide their actions from even those who were kept there. They didn't use the gas chambers for mass killings but they were still used. I really hated them. I hesitated before entering the gas chamber and when I was in there I felt like I couldn't breathe. I quickly passed through. Probably the most sickening part, along with the ovens. The ovens had some thicker places of dust in some crevices which I'm afraid to believe were still ashes. It didn't really look like just dust from the passing of time. The last room in that building was where the dead bodies would be when waiting for the ovens and that was unnerving. We walked to the back of that building and there were 4 or 5 locations marked as graves along a path in the forest. They were marked as mass graves and where people were shot and buried. That was also very eerie. I walked back out and past all the locations of the blocks and went to the front where there were two blocks still standing. I actually think these were rebuilt to look like the originals. I'm pretty sure they tore all of the originals down because they didn't want any of that to remain. I've always read about where they slept but it looked much different than I always pictured. They had lockers and small bathrooms that I never thought they had. It's not like those things were a blessing though. The lockers were added responsibility and more of an excuse to receive punishment. The floors of that room always had to be spotless along with their dishes and the fronts of the lockers. Any speck of dirt or smudge and they were severely injured. The bathrooms weren't much of a luxury either because they barely had but a few minutes to use it. We walked to the bookstore and then caught a bus back to dachau and then trained to Munich. We were going to explore the city but we weren't sure what was there so we just went outside for a second and then ate at the train station. I had some pretty bad Asian food. We caught the train back to Salzburg. It was a full train and ddifferent than any train before. A bit sketchy. It was an an hour and 45 minutes. From Salzburg we had a 1 minute changeover to our train to the hotel. We sprinted through the train station like nobodies business and made it just in time.

Fun facts (actually these aren't so fun because this whole post is sad): there was a huge group of Latinos there and they ALL had matching black puffy north face jackets. And I'm talking like hundreds of them. We were all confused as to what group would have that many people in it and how they all had the same coat. They honestly weren't very respectful either because they were taking pictures of themselves by the scenery. It made me pretty mad. They were literally smiling for pictures in front of the graves of hundreds of mistreated people. I didn't get through all of the museum because it was pretty big. I didn't see the word "holocaust" anywhere there, which I thought was a bit odd. But maybe I just missed it. Dachau was the first concentration camp and served as the model for all the other camps. It was a work camp so it only contained men. No women or children.

Shoutout: the teachers and people who document events of the holocaust who inspired my deep interest in it at a young age. Going to a concentration camp is something I always thought would be interesting but never thought would happen. I would always picture the events that I read about but going to the location that they happened, stirred a feeling I never got when merely reading the words. Seeing it brought about a whole new sadness for the lives that were lost and the lives that were treated cruelly by fellow humans.