Munich - Day 2

This morning we went to the Dachau concentration camp located outside of Munich. It was raining the whole time which made it harder to get around since it was mostly outside. I found the concentration camp very moving and by the end of it I had a knot in my stomach. We went on a self guided audio tour to different parts of the camp from the crematorium to the barracks. There was also a museum that showed a lot of pictures with information and a movie that we saw at the end. Everyone knows the history of Hitler and World War II, but making it personal and seeing it face to face puts a whole new perspective on the situation. I could not even imagine going through the things which the prisoners (not just Jews) went through. In one of the audio parts, it said that the clothing consisted of wooden shoes, pants, a shirt, and a hat. They had no underwear and the hat was not for warmth, but only for the purpose of saluting the soldiers to give them respect. At that camp alone, over 30,000 people were recorded to have died (which means there were a lot more). The camp did not have women there until around 1945 and when they came they were forced into prostitution and had to do the same jobs as men. When they got pregnant, many tried to hide their pregnancies or killed the baby when it was born to not have it suffer the testing and death which would occur with the SS army. Also, it just shocks me that that really was not that long ago like Geen was alive during that time. I just don’t know how I would have reacted to that situation if I was alive in the United States when all of those people were suffering. I could talk all day about all of the things that I learned and saw, but I am not going to.




After the concentration camp tour, we were dropped back off at our hotel. Amanda, CJ, Kinsie, Caitlin, and I were going to go souvenir shopping, but it’s a national holiday today and everything was closed. It was also raining still so it made us not want to walk around. So I ended up taking a nap and just hanging out downstairs until we left for dinner. We went back to that Hofbrauhaus where everyone got drinks. Amanda, CJ, and I didn’t want t spend a lot on food so we ended up going to Burger King. It was actually really similar, but they could not understand how I could want a chicken sandwich plain haha. So after that we went back and said bye to everyone and just came back to the hotel. We are hanging out downstairs writing journals and uploading pictures. Hopefully I will go to bed early tonight!