Travel - None other than Dachau Concentration Camp.

Concentration Camp became "real" to me after I have watched The Boy in the Striped Pajamas quite sometime back.

When I planned to go Germany, I knew I had to visit one of them and I chosen Dachau Concentration Camp which is located in Munich. I know it is not exactly a happy entry to blog first but this tour really impacted me.

Color Coding for Different Category.

The first picture (right at the top) meant "Work Sets you Free" in English, which ironically meant the opposite then. I don't want to touch on the details of history since we could all easily google about it. I just want to share what I saw, what I felt and why this tour meant so much to me.

This is a sculpture representing those prisoners who committed suicide in the camp by throwing themselves onto the electric fences.

When our group was approaching the memorial, I saw a few tourists taking photos with the sculpture, smiling. I don't know about you but when I saw them doing that I just turned and tell my friend, I wouldn't do   that. It is so important for us to understand history so that we can treat these memorials with the right manner. I just felt that we need to be sensitive. =)

Never Again. 

2 simple yet powerful words that got me stood in front of this memorial for awhile. To me, these 2 words carried such a determination.

The electric barred wire.

The guard tower.

The moment any prisoners stepped onto the grass patch, they will be spotted and shot dead.

The dormitory was exactly what I saw in the movie.

Eventually we went to the "Crematorium", here is where the gas chamber lies too.

I stood there, thinking to myself: So this is what I saw in the movie, where the prisoners were told that they will be having a shower (which was rare for them to take showers), they took off their clothes, and were disinfected instead. 

Walked into the gas chamber, the door was shut behind them. Pitch darkness and the gas was released and subsequently the dead bodies were incinerated. Scenes of the movie kept flashing back. I came out with a heavy heart.

Outside the crematorium stood this statue.

"Honor the dead; Remind the living"

The guide shared that this part of German history was incorporated into the German education and it is compulsory to visit the concentration camps for the students. They are not proud of this history but they do not deny it. They are people who wore history on their sleeves. 

Ignorant as I am, the guide also shared that by doing the hand sign of Adolf Hitler or drawing of the swastika symbol are chargeable offences. This is how serious they treated their past.

This was a very meaningful lesson for me. This is an important part of history and I am glad I know a little bit more now. =)

Purposeful Traveller - A reason for every place visited.