#BeaumontTravels: Germany, Summer 2018: Day 4

Greetings from Munich.

Today started with a full European breakfast, which is a continental breakfast plus eggs and sausage.Now this is white sausage. It looks like it isn’t cooked and you can only get it for breakfast. So of course, some of us tried it.

Afterbreakfastweboarded the coach for our half hour drive to Dachau. Dachau was the first concentration camp opened by the Nazi’s in 1933 as a re-education camp for political prisoners. It is the model upon which all other concentration camps were based. It was designed to be a work camp, mostly for the munitions factories in the area, not a death camp like Auschwitz. Regardless, in the 12yearsit was open over 41,000 prisoners were killed at Dachau.

On the drive in Silvana talked to everyone about how to act when we visited this national memorial museum. She didn’t need to worry, our girls acted as you would expect, with the utmost dignity and respect.

Uponarrivalwemet our guide Claudia, who took us through the camp explaining how the camp would have operated and how things changed as the war dragged on. For instance, barracks that were built to hold 50 prisoners in 1933 were holding up to 500 by 1943. She took us through the main gate, with the sign “Work will set you free”, showed us the assembly yard, where brutal roll calls were held, and then into the barracks. Only 2 of the original 32 barracks remain and they were reconstructed when the camp reopened as a museum. The interior of the barracks is set up to show the effect of overcrowding as the war progressed, the condition each room worsening over time.

After the barracks we walked to the back of the camp, passing row after row of foundations representing where the other 30 barracks would have stood.

At the far end of the camp we saw 4 memorials constructed in the 1960s by the major religions of the people who died in the camp; Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Orthodox.

Moving on, we passed from the prisoners part of the camp to the crematorium. There are two buildings in this area, the old crematorium and a new much larger one that was built near the end of the war. We then walked back along the security fences to the big maintenance building by the front gate. The security fencing, ditches, walls, and guardtowerswaseffective- no one ever escaped from Dachau. In the maintenance building, our guide said goodbye and we watched a20minutevideoon the rise of the Nazis through the liberation of the camp, it was very moving. Afterthevideowewent out the back door of theater to see something I had never seen before, the camp prison. This was where the special prisoners were held. As if the regular camp wasn’t brutal enough - this was even worse.

Our visit to Dachau lasted 2 hours - it was intense and I believe it will have alonglastingeffecton our students. This is why I think these educational field trips are so important, we talk about the horrors of Nazi Germany in class but to experience a place where it actually happened ... that is what teaching is all about.

After Dachau, we lighten things up a lot by visiting BMW World, a museum, automobile showroom, and design studio all rolled into one. There we had lunch and the girls all picked out the cars they would like for their birthdays.

Next, back into Munich where we picked up our city tour guide Colette. She took us around the city telling us about the history and culture of Bavaria’s largest city. We drove by the Olympic Stadium and Village, home of the infamous 1972 Summer Olympics, stopped at the Nymphenburg Palace (see attached picture) where we were able to visit the palace gardens, moved on to the section of town where the Nazi’s had their capital, and even saw surfers in the river.

After our city tourwewere joined by 8 of the Texans for a bike tour of Munich. We walked to Mike’s Bikes where we met Scott, our bike guide from New York. We were fitted with helmets and selected our bikes then headed out into the English Garden where we spent about 2 hours exploring one of the largest city parks in the world. We had a great time!
Next, dinner atDinea where they had a very nice buffet featuring traditional German food as well as other dishes. This was perfect because people could choose what they wanted and all the food was good.

After dinner back to the hotel where the students hung out in the lobby for a while before going to bed.

Another busy day and now time for bed - tomorrow is the day we leave Germany and drive through Austria to Northern Italy.

Talk to you soon.
Bob