Dachao
Wooo! Today has been... an experience! We went to Dachao today. The concentration camp not but 2 hours away from here, in Erlangen. Its one of the most known concentration camps ever. Its HUGE!
Its an unreal feeling going threw it, realizing how many people were there... and how many DIED there. Espically when you go to the crematorium. It still smells kinda like burnt flesh, mold, and age. Each of the ovens could burn up to three bodies at once. And several thousands were waiting to be burned...
Well, to start now about the actual trip and what happened at the trip and not about the visit... I doubt I'll ever forget that... espically this one picture of this jewish guy that they had preformed a test upon. The pressure drop one. Theres three pictures of this guy. And in the first one is before the test... and he's kinda looking at the camera with a half smile. The kind of 'oh look I have a camera in my face' look. He didn't look THAT bad either, given he was dirty. The next one had his face when they dropped the pressure on him... he was twisting in agony, but he was belted to the seat, and so were his hands.
And in the last one, he's dead from the severity of it. But his body is still kind rigid. And just its the face of the 'before' that gets me I think. Its never gonna leave me... I almost cried looking at that one. And then reading about the 'saltwater experiment...' Were they stopped feeding you, and giving you clean water and let you only drink saltwater. Thats it.
One of the people who had quotes on the placks had had that happen to him. He said the bouts of thirt was so horrible that he remembered someone in the showers they got once a week, on his hands and knees trying to suck up the dirtied water from the shower...
Ugh.
But yeah... ADD moment there..
We were suppose to leave for Dachau about 8:15. So we all left at like 8:40. I slept all the way there... missed out on some awesome scenery. Lol.
So we get there and watch a video in German. I could barly understand but maybe 2 words out of it. Lol. And then we went with the tour guide who wasn't exactly that used to dealing with foreigners or something... I dunno. He was weird.
And Frau Horn, of course trying to be helpful, told us she'd trasnlate for us. Uhhuh... suuure. Never take her word on it.
I mean we stood there for a good 10 mins. and she turns to us to 'translate' saying 'He's talking about how the people had to stand for an hour.' Another German kid came over to us and told us that no the guy was talking about all the things they had to do to survive.
And then the other lady came and gave us 'translators' for us to use so we're not so bored. Thus, of course, Frau Jahnke told us to go ahead and continue on our own since we wern't going by the tour-guide's thing.
So on our way to the crematorium, Frau Horn stopps us and is like 'No! You must follow the group! Because we have to go to the churchs!' and we're all like 'Uh, no. Sorry, but we were told to go on our own by Frau Jahnke'
She just huffed away... lol. And yeah.
Nothing else really spectacular happened. We saw cows (real cows here!) and realized that their charter buses are AWESOME compared to ours. Ours suck. And not well...
Its an unreal feeling going threw it, realizing how many people were there... and how many DIED there. Espically when you go to the crematorium. It still smells kinda like burnt flesh, mold, and age. Each of the ovens could burn up to three bodies at once. And several thousands were waiting to be burned...
Well, to start now about the actual trip and what happened at the trip and not about the visit... I doubt I'll ever forget that... espically this one picture of this jewish guy that they had preformed a test upon. The pressure drop one. Theres three pictures of this guy. And in the first one is before the test... and he's kinda looking at the camera with a half smile. The kind of 'oh look I have a camera in my face' look. He didn't look THAT bad either, given he was dirty. The next one had his face when they dropped the pressure on him... he was twisting in agony, but he was belted to the seat, and so were his hands.
And in the last one, he's dead from the severity of it. But his body is still kind rigid. And just its the face of the 'before' that gets me I think. Its never gonna leave me... I almost cried looking at that one. And then reading about the 'saltwater experiment...' Were they stopped feeding you, and giving you clean water and let you only drink saltwater. Thats it.
One of the people who had quotes on the placks had had that happen to him. He said the bouts of thirt was so horrible that he remembered someone in the showers they got once a week, on his hands and knees trying to suck up the dirtied water from the shower...
Ugh.
But yeah... ADD moment there..
We were suppose to leave for Dachau about 8:15. So we all left at like 8:40. I slept all the way there... missed out on some awesome scenery. Lol.
So we get there and watch a video in German. I could barly understand but maybe 2 words out of it. Lol. And then we went with the tour guide who wasn't exactly that used to dealing with foreigners or something... I dunno. He was weird.
And Frau Horn, of course trying to be helpful, told us she'd trasnlate for us. Uhhuh... suuure. Never take her word on it.
I mean we stood there for a good 10 mins. and she turns to us to 'translate' saying 'He's talking about how the people had to stand for an hour.' Another German kid came over to us and told us that no the guy was talking about all the things they had to do to survive.
And then the other lady came and gave us 'translators' for us to use so we're not so bored. Thus, of course, Frau Jahnke told us to go ahead and continue on our own since we wern't going by the tour-guide's thing.
So on our way to the crematorium, Frau Horn stopps us and is like 'No! You must follow the group! Because we have to go to the churchs!' and we're all like 'Uh, no. Sorry, but we were told to go on our own by Frau Jahnke'
She just huffed away... lol. And yeah.
Nothing else really spectacular happened. We saw cows (real cows here!) and realized that their charter buses are AWESOME compared to ours. Ours suck. And not well...