Tutzing and visit to Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial

July 4th-7th

       After our exhausting past three days of sightseeing in Salzburg, we had an enjoyably lazy three days with our friends in Tutzing.  We slept in embarrassingly late, got the blog up and running, filled in our journals, and called the family on Skype.  It was also great to have home-cooked food again, especially for Isabella, as Conny had many gluten-free foods stocked for her son Semmy.  One of the days we met an American au pair from Florida who’d taken an American Government class at Valencia with the same professor as I had—the world is smaller than you might think!  

On Friday evening, we paid a surprise visit to the Friesenegger family on their farm (where our family stayed for a week in 2002).  It was great seeing them again, though the Bayrish dialect of German is nearly impossible to understand, and I especially enjoyed petting the young calves and letting them suckle on our hands.  Anneliese said she doubted I would be any happier on my wedding day than I was with those calves—I  hope that’s not true, but if it is, that wouldn’t be so bad either!     

Dachau Prison Courtyard: site of several firing squad executions

     Conny’s oldest son Timmy came home on Friday night, and since Conny would be out the next day, he kindly offered to drive us about in his new car.  So on Saturday morning, which was grey and rainy, we decided to go see Dachau.  Dachau was the first concentration camp of the Nazi regime, built in 1933, and was the model for other camps throughout Germany and Poland.  As you can imagine, it was a somber visit, but we decided it was something we ought to see.  (Anneliese takes over writing, with thoughts from her journal of that day): 

        It is necessary to see the pain and suffering caused by such a regime, so that it will not happen again.  Though Dachau was ostensibly a men’s work camp, and not specifically an extermination camp, over 30,000 Jews, political opponents, priests and pastors, Jehovah Witnesses, homosexuals, and other innocent men died there.  The entrance gate into the camp states “Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Makes Free)”, but it was a lie.  Each room was meant to hold 50 people, but eventually held 200.  So tight was it that there was not even enough space to lie on one’s back on the floor.  The hours were long, and the food was scarce.  Everything done there was done to strip away the men’s identity, pride, and willpower to live.  Every man was assigned a number, their heads were shaved, and their cloths were the same.  Every day they worked long hours doing useless work, such as one day digging a large hole, and the next filling it, so that they could not even have pride in accomplishment.  In the punishment chambers there was always a rope, so that they could take their life whenever they chose.  The prisoners were daily ordered, goaded, or pushed into the dead zone, where they were declared to have been shot while trying to escape.  Dachau also has a furnace and gas chamber, although it is believed to have never been used, but no one knows why.  Walking into the gas chamber was awful.  Above the door it says “Brausebad (The Shower Bath)”, but inside all it has are grates, where the gas would have come in.  Next to the gas chamber is the room where the bodies would wait to be burned in the furnace, for it took too much time to bury them.  The first thing the American soldiers saw in 1945 when Dachau was finally liberated was thousands of dead bodies, waiting to be burned.  Needless to say, it was tough.  Throughout it all, survivors of the camp survived, and after liberation had only one message for the world.  It was not revenge, or a demand for recompense; it was simply this: “Never Again.”
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Where the Barracks use to stand, only two remain

                  After our emotionally draining day, however, we had a very fun and very fast ride home on the famously speed-limit free Autobahn, and then headed to a Biergarten for dinner (for some of us), and Apfelschorle (for all of us!) on the Stannberger See.  (That’s right—those drinks in the steins are apple juice and mineral water mixtures, not beer!)  Then we went home, played some card games together, and packed for Sunday.

       



 On Sunday morning we got up early, ate breakfast, and said goodbye to Conny and a not-so-awake Timmy, before heading to the train station in Tutzing. 
From there we began a wild day of train hopping which we will write about later!

            Bis bald (Until Soon)! 
Anneliese, Johanna, and Isabella