Weekend in Munich

Guten Tag!

Munich, or München as the Germans call it, was incredible. Germany is on of the most historic places that I have been to thus far. I found it particularily interesting because when I was in middle school and high school, the history classes on World War II, seemed to be the most captivating. I went to München with my roomate Diana, and two other girls, who happen to also be Kappa Deltas, Katie and Cate. We got a chance to see a lot in München and of course we did visit a few of the famour beer gardens including the HofbräuHaus, but that wasn't even the part that I will always remember. The part of our visit to Germany that really had an impact on me was visiting Dachua, the first concentration camp that was establsihed, and the only one to function throughtout the entire reign under the Third Reich.

We took a day tour of Dachua and really got the chance to fuly understand the history of WWII and Dachua. It took about half an hour to actually get to the Dachua Memorial, and our guide Steve was incredibly knowledgeable on the history of Dachua. It is hard to really explain to you what I was thinking when I walked through, and hearing all the stories really made the experience all the more emotional and real.

I tried my best to capture it with pictures, and at a few places I panned around taking a video to preserve what I was seeing. One thing that kept going through my mind was: 1) Someone actually had to sit down and think about how a concentration camp need to function 2) People were running these camps, and were the ones doing horrible and painful things to other people 3) Those in charge actually set up the camps to look like safe places, for example gas chambers were disguised as showers so when people came for inspections they didn't question it. Take a look at the pictures, and the few videos I took, I hope the can give you a better idea of what Dachua was really like.

When we got back, we all had an uneasy feeling about what we just saw, but at the same time we all were thinking that, even with exisiting concentration camps open for the public to see there are still people that say it never happened. One thing our guide pointed out that I really wasn't aware of was who was actually held in concentration camps. Over a fifth of those held were Jews, but among the others were political leaders and their people from over 30 different countries.

I could probably go on and on about what I saw at Dachau, and it was only a fraction of my visit in München. There is still a lot I didn't get to see, and Germany in general is a place I definately want to go back to and explore.

Pictures: Munich, Germany

Video Links:
Gas Chamber
Dachua 1
Dachua 2
Dancing at the HofbräuHaus