Dachau

This past weekend eight of the girls from the group decided to head to Munich for Oktoberfest that started on Saturday. We had all day to spend in Munich on Friday, so six of us decided we needed to visit Dachau the concentration camp.

After arriving in Munich(an 8 hour bus ride from Florence) we took a train and a bus out of the city to Dachau. We each checked out an audio tour of the grounds and ended up splitting up as we wondered the grounds. I ended up walking around the majority of the day by myself and the silence allowed me to really experience the memories around Dachau. Appropriately the weather was extremely dreary on that day, it was getting cool and the clouds were about to burst with rain at any minute. Listening to the accounts from survivors on the audio tour in the places where these things happened sent chills down my spine. Seeing the exact place where so, so many people were tortured and murdered was the saddest and most nauseating day I have ever had. There was a documentary film that we were able to watch and we were able to learn a lot about the history of the Holocaust and about how Dachau was started. The amount of people who were involved in making all of this happen blew my mind. I have no idea how anyone would ever support something like this and let it get as far as it ever did. This day showed me how cruel some human beings can be and that it takes more than just the victims to stop something. During the documentary the prisoners who were saved said they would not let the lives of those lost go unforgotten. Seeing how these people were locked up for months with barely any food, water, or any contact with another human being is beyond my imagination. It was so unbelievable. Awful. I truly cannot even express this in words.

Below I am going to post a link to firsthand accounts of one of the survivors to give you a sense of what I experienced that day:
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/media_oi.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005214&MediaId=4784