Germany Trip Day 14: Hohenschwangau to Dachau

We left our hotel shortly after breakfast, stopped at a nearby church to look around, then continued on toward Dachau. The church was actually locked, but I took some pictures of the exterior and attempted a picture of the interior through the window.







Visiting Dachau was a powerful moment, as one can imagine. Persecution of certain people groups is nothing new. K and I have been reading about Nero, and how he would coat Christians in pitch and tar, then set them on fire and use them as literal human torches. The people in charge here must have had similar mindsets to Nero to be able to treat other human beings so horribly.

I thought about converting the pictures I took of Dachau to black and white, but then I decided that color more accurately portrayed what people saw. Black and white makes it too easy to disassociate yourself from the images.

The day was hot, with little breeze or cloud cover to offer relief from the burning sun. We parked our car and walked to the information center of the former concentration camp. We had chosen to use the personal audio tour available in English, so we picked up our devices, and began our tour.

Foundation of one of the administrative buildings outside the camp.


Part of the old railway which brought in new prisoners

Former SS buildings. These are used by the Bavarian police and not open to the public.

Looking from the SS buildings toward the camp

Picture of people cheering when they were liberated in 1945. The camp, designed for about 6,000 people, held more than 30,000 upon liberation.

Plaque to honor the 42nd Rainbow Division

Plaque to honor the 20th Armored Division

The gates that many entered and never exited

Work makes you free

Inside one of windows of the gate house

The gatehouse, or jourhaus, with the guard tower on top

One of the first sites visible upon entering is the roll call area. Prisoners were forced to stand at attention in all kinds of weather for an hour or more while the guards counted them. Those that were too weak to stand were punished. Those that helped the weak were punished. On such a hot day as the day we visited, I truly empathized with those who were emprisoned here. I had water. They had none. I could stand in the shade. They had none. I had slathered myself with sunscreen to prevent burning. They had none.

Prisoners standing during roll call

The roll call area. The buildings to the right are now the museum, but used to house the laundry, kitchen, storage rooms for personal belongings of prisoners, and the shower baths where the prisoners were punished by flogging or hanging.

More roll call area. The buildings to the left are reconstructed barracks.

In front of the museum buildings lies the memorial.

"May the example of those who were exterminated here between 1933 and 1945 because they resisted Nazism help to unite the living for the defence of peace and freedom and in respect for their fellow men."

Memorial sculpture

The triangles represent the different-triangles that the various people groups were required to wear to identify them.

"Ashes of the Unknown Concentration Camp Prisoner"

Most of the barracks are gone. They were too dilapidated to keep when they turned the old camp into a memorial and museum in 1968. They have two reconstructed barracks to give people an idea of what they looked like. Inside one of them, they have the beds, locker rooms, and bathrooms. I think the toilets and sinks are original, but the beds are definitely newer.

One portion of the audio tour talked about how strict they were with bed-making. All of the beds had to be made according to exact specifications. It was unacceptable if all the lines of the blue and white checkered covers didn't line up across all the beds.

Reconstructed barracks

Looking out across the foundations of the original barracks.

First beds-- three high, but everyone had a place for personal things

Beds 2 -- personal space gone

Tables for eating, and wooden lockers against the wall.

Beds 3 -- there are not even any dividers between the beds. It is like one big area where everyone was crowded together.

Toilets

Wash basins

At the far end of the camp lie the memorials -- Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant. I walked by them, but, due to time, I didn't enter any of them.

Catholic Memorial

Jewish Memorial

The ditch and fence that separated prisoners from freedom.

Fence, guard tower, and perimeter fence. Anyone who stepped on the grass could be shot.

The crematorium, also known as Barrack X, lies at the far end of the camp, across a bridge, and hidden by the trees. It has been said that they sometimes burned several people at a time in each oven to keep up with the bodies. The building also contains the gas chambers.

The Crematorium

Memorial to four women serving in the armed forces murdered and cremated here

The sign over the "showers" (aka gas chamber)

The door to the gas chamber. Notice that the handles latch to trap people inside

Gas chamber that was never used for mass murders. That is not to say it wasn't used on individuals for human experimentation.

Two of the ovens in the new crematorium

Another oven in the new crematorium

The old crematorium. The sign nearby reads," This crematorium was built in the summer of 1940, after the foreign prisoners arrived and the mortality rate greatly increased. A year later it was already working beyond capacity. The crematorium was in operation until about April 1943. During this period approximately 11,000 prisoners were cremated here."

Bridge between the "camp" and the crematorium

Walking back from the crematorium toward the entrance. Guard tower and fence on the right; barrack foundations on the left.

The audio tour included several first-hand accounts of various aspects of the camp. The testimony of a lady named Edith who participated in the liberation of the camp brought tears to my eyes, as did many other things that day. Words cannot convey my sentiments of horror and sadness.

I didn't go through the museum. The kids were done, and I had seen most of what there was to see outside. We still had to drive to Nuremburg that afternoon, so we headed back to the car to complete our drive. We stopped at a grocery store in the town of Dachau for cold drinks and fruit, then headed north.

Germany Trip Day 13: Hohenschwangau and Füssen

After breakfast, we hurried to make AJ's doctor appointment for his head injury. We found the clinic using our GPS, and made our way inside the building. After talking to the receptionist, we payed the fee and found the waiting room. The waiting room was actually really great for the kids. AJ didn't get a chance to really enjoy it as he was soon called back to the examining room, but H and K really enjoyed playing with all the toys, and it was relaxing for me because I could just sit there and watch them play happily. No one else was there most of the time while we waited, so I didn't have to run interference with H.

After the doctor gave AJ the OK, we drove to downtown Füssen, found a parking spot, and walked around.

I'm not sure what the stories of these paintings are, but I saw a man making a violin, and I remembered reading that Füssen is historically a violin-making town.

This was the entrance to a museum we later chose not to explore.

The museum again

A church we passed.

The ceiling

The right part of the front

Looking left

Center

A painting of what looks like the Last Supper

Another church. I didn't enter this one, though.

After walking down the main street a little, we found a store that specializes in traditional Bavarian clothing, including dirndls and lederhosen. We had already bought the lederhosen (for more money) in Hohenschwangau, but I was unsatisfied with K's dress. We decided to go in and look around. They had an incredible selection for adults and children. There were so many beautiful dresses that I had difficulty choosing which ones K should try on. We finally settled on a few, and, after trying them on, K and I decided to buy a beautiful light purple dirndl for just a little LESS than the cheap dress we bought at the souvenir shop. The boys' clothes were acceptable, but if we had bought them at this store, we would have been able to get the correct size for H (AJ's size was easy to find) for a lower price. Oh, well. You live and learn.

After purchasing the dress, we wandered around a little more. We found imitation crocs for K for only three Euros. This was great, since her old shoes were dirty and worn and needing to be replaced.

Füssen

Then we stepped into another shop that carried some cuckoo clocks. The kids had been admiring them almost the whole trip, and we decided to finally look closely at the ones in this store. After looking and listening to many different clocks, we decided on one.

Our cuckoo clock. The people at the top dance, the water wheel turns, the men raise and lower their steins, and the lady brings them more beer from the Biergarten.

Another cuckoo clock we considered. This one also has men with their steins and a water wheel, but this one has kids playing instruments at the top. It was just too big.

Another cuckoo clock we looked at. The men saw the log, the waterwheel turns, and the people dance at the top.

After purchasing the clock, we decided that we had spent our wad. We stopped at a pharmacy to buy Timo some contact solution and snapped some pictures on the way back to the car.

The pharmacy. The building is flat. The columns are painted on.

Clock tower at the corner of an abbey.

Once in the car, we stopped at a bakery on the way out of town for a sandwich, then drove back to the hotel. The sandwich, along with other sandwiches we had made at breakfast, the bananas purchased the day before, and some chips leftover from Heidelberg provided enough sustenance for our lunch.

After lunch, I left Timo to tend to the kids while I attempted to return K's first dress. The lady wouldn't give me my money back, but she did let me exchange it for other items in the store. I chose a stein, a hat for AJ, and some postcards and bookmarks to round it off. I think she was a little surprised that I didn't exchange it for another dress, but I didn't want to tell her that I thought her store was a rip-off, and her dresses were cheap and overpriced.

Upon leaving the store, I hiked around a little to take some more pictures of the town while I was kid-free.

This is where we had dinner later that night.

Upon returning, Timo and I decided to spend the remainder of the afternoon visiting the famous Weiskirche, which is located about 30 minutes from where we were. We could have visited some museums and another castle in Füssen, but we had to be realistic about what to expect out of our kids. We had planned on visiting this church anyway, on our way north toward Munich and Nuremberg. This allowed us more freedom with our time the next day.

Before leaving for Weiskirche, we dressed the kids in their German clothes, and attempted to take some pictures in a field in front of Neuschwanstein. The foggy weather was not ideal, but we really wanted this setting, so we made do with what we had. It was an adventure, trying to get all kids smiling at the same time. We ended up with some acceptable pictures, and some that might even be considered good. On we went to the church.

As we walked toward the church, I was disappointed to see that no pictures were allowed inside. There was a service going on when we got there, so we sat quietly in the back pew and looked around. Others were not so polite, and they wandered around taking forbidden photographs. I even saw a man in a pew toward the front, taking a video. I bought some postcards afterwards to have a memory of the interior of this breathtaking house of God. Outside, the kids played a little, and H found a pigeon to follow. We attempted to get some pictures on a country road by the church, but that was mostly a bust. Many people commented on our children and their dress, and one woman even asked if she could take a picture of H. He is such a charmer.

Weiskirche

The kids looking at the pigeon

In front of the church

H following the pigeon again

AJ and H following the pigeon together




The boys on the country road we wanted to use as a backdrop for photographs. This picture was just too fun to not post.

A chapel close by Weiskirche

The interior of the chapel

We finally decided it was time to head back. At the hotel, we changed the kids out of their clothes before dinner. We then walked to one of the many restaurants close-by, and we ate German food once more. I chose something that included three thin bratwursts, sauerkraut, and mashed potatoes, with a side salad, of course. Timothy chose something that translated to lumberjack steak with ham, onion, and potato wedges. I tried his, and it was fabulous. Mine was good, too, but I would say that his choice was better. The kids ate fish sticks. The name “Captain Nemo” had them hooked (excuse the pun) from the moment they read it on the menu. We concluded dinner with some hot apple streudel. Yum.

The sun came out sometime while we were in the restaurant, so we decided to dress the kids up again and attempt another round of picture-taking. We got some really good pictures, but none of the good ones included all three kids. Oh, well. They were tired, and so done with the whole process, so we climbed back in the car to drive back to the hotel.

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So, here are some of the pictures that most accurately portray the whole photo-taking experience for us. There are too many to post all of them or even the best ones, so I settled on some silly ones mixed with a couple of good ones. You can tell which ones we took in the afternoon, and which we took after dinner.

Action shot

Yes, their fingers, are, in fact, up their noses.

She looks like she is waiting, dreaming of her long lost love, who just happens to be coming along.

Just being silly with her brother's hat

AJ giving K a flower

H looking at a flower

Me and my girl