I place a stone, which joins many others, on the marble monument that proclaims, �Never Again.� I wish I believed that. Putting a stone on a burial place is a Jewish tradition to honor the dead. The personalization of the exhibits in the museum including photographs and letters is a downer but there is no denying that what happened, happened. I get angry at the so-called historians who try to deny the �Holocaust� by alleging it is an invention of the Zionists, which among other things, totally ignores the millions of Gypsies and Slavs that were massacred. Dachau was not a death camp, per se. It was, among other things, a holding area for Auschwitz and Treblinka where millions were put to death. That is not to say prisoners weren�t shot, beaten, experimented on or worked and starved to death here, 33,000 of them.
History is rife with bursts of ethnic based killing. No group, though, did it with the cold-blooded, efficient and planned way the Nazi�s did. The recent HBO movie, "Conspiracy," about the infamous Wannsee Conference illustrates the terrifying banality of the Nazis� approach better than I can. The dozens of sub-camps that utilized slave labor were run by companies that are now admired like BMW, Thiessen, Bayer, etc. I doubt if I ever will be able to bring myself to buy a BMW automobile and not just because they are over-priced.
I cannot make sense of the whole Nazi era. A group of thugs, which is what the early Nazi�s were, got control of an entire country with no constraints on their behavior. Patriotism run amok. Imagine the U.S. ruled by the worst of the Hell�s Angels and most people going along with the excesses. I don�t believe that the �good� Germans had no idea of what was going on. Who were supplying the camps? Who were walking by the walls every day? Who were hauling the output of the slave labor away? Madness! Madness! Madness! Maybe that�s the only explanation there is.
Tom has a heartwarming moment. As he is buying a book, a woman asks him if he is a WW II veteran. He demurs and she explains that she has undying gratitude to Americans because they liberated her father from this very camp.
We both go into emotional overload simultaneously. We leave the camp and ride the bus to the train station. We stop for a sandwich and a beer at a stand near the station. The stand is run by a voluble Greek who gets us laughing again by making gentle fun of our mid-day beer drinking. He is either truly funny or we just need some kind of release. I�ll never know which.
We arrive in Munich at the main train station. The station is a trip in itself. Rick Steves commented that it�s the kind of place that turns accountants into vagabonds. I agree. We hungrily devour a grilled bratwurst on a roll. The sausage sticks out 3 or 4 inches on each side of the roll. The Germans, no less than the French, love their food and demand quality no matter where it�s served.
I repeat an earlier mistake and ask the wrong questions at the Tourist Information Center. I ask the attendant for directions to the street our hotel is on. She responds with accuracy and we drag our bags about a mile to our hotel, the Kurpfalz and wear ourselves out in the process. We learn later that we could have taken the S-Bahn to within three blocks of our hotel or, if we preferred walking, taken a much shorter route Someday, I�ll learn to ask the right questions, like, �What is the quickest or shortest route to the Kurpfalz Hotel?�
A grumpy hotel clerk adds to the joy of the day but the rooms are very nice, especially at 62 Euros per night with breakfast. Yes, I asked the right questions this time. After check-in, we take an Olympic and short nap break before exploring Munich.
We figure out the S Bahn route and head for Marienplatz, the cultural and economic center of Munich. I forget my camera this evening but I still have many Munich pictures on my photo site. We grab a couple beers in the Rathskeller, a basement restaurant with outdoor tables inside the City Hall complex.
We walk around, sticking our heads in a couple restaurants but nothing grabs us and when we try to get some attention to secure a table, we get no response, maybe because of the rain sending everyone indoors. Fortunately, we find Rosie, the happy waiter, in one of the large, busier restaurants and end up with a pretty good meal as usual. The music is loud and people are laughing and enjoying themselves. We hate to leave but it�s been a long day and we need to be rested; for tomorrow we visit the Dachau concentration camp.
We find Pusser�s Bar named after Pusser�s Rum. We order sandwiches and beers and watch a rather large group of young people drinking together but not having much fun. I come to the conclusion that there isn�t a lot of joy here in Munich on a Friday night.
We wrap the evening up after an interesting street conversation with a businessman from New Orleans. A little TV time catching up on the Olympics and I am fast asleep.
(Continued)
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Our breakfast is one of the best of the whole trip - eggs, bacon, great rolls, and strong coffee. We take our time perhaps, partially, because of our apprehension about the experience we are about to have. The S-Bahn takes us to the town of Dachau where we board a bus to the Concentration Camp Museum.
Visiting this site is a very intense experience. The museum is unremitting in its presentation of the horrors this place contained during the Nazi era. Whoever set this up pulled no punches. Tom and I separate for our wanderings. I visit the museum, the bunker set up for "VIP" prisoners, the entry gate with its cynical message, �Arbeit macht frei,� (�Work makes you free�) and the large roll call area. I spend time in the reconstructed barracks, the huge empty space where the barracks used to be and the rear of the camp that has the never-used crematorium, four chapels, Jewish, Roman Catholic, Protestant and Russian Orthodox and a Carmelite convent.