The Story Behind…

“Dachau”

Photographed near munich, germany, november 23, 1994

Learning History in Munich, Germany

During my trek across Europe, I had been to Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, France, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden. I had reconnected with many of my exchange student friends I had met in Australia. I had met up with all that I was going to, and now it was time to continue my journey on my own for bit. I left Scandinavia and made my way south by ferry and train. I traveled throughout the night and day and ended up headed towards Germany. My plan was to eventually meet up with my sister’s college roommate and best friend, Julie Herrick, who was studying art preservation in Milan, Italy. I hoped she would let me crash at her apartment for a couple of days, where I’d be happy to sleep on the floor in my sleeping bag and estatic if the apartment had a couch I could sleep on.

After checking the train tables and my European guide book, I determined that Munich would be a great place to stop, get off the train and explore.

Dachau

  • riding the bus to Dachau, and meeting another American tourist. It was so refreshing to speak to another native English speaker, the first one I’d talked to since I was in London.
    He was an aspiring photographer, and when he discovered I was a “professional photographer” he stuck to me like glue.

I was very determined to visit a concentration camp during my trip.

My grandfather, WJR, personal hero, fought the Nazi’s in the Battle of the Bulge. Christmas fight. Purple Heart recipient. Lost his right arm. Came home and married my grandma, my mom was their first child as part of the great American Baby Boom. I was my Mom and Dad’s first born.

My sister Tracy had been an exchange student to Belgium, and my family visited her during the Christmas holidays. We visited Bastogne, Belgium, where my grandfather fought.

So to now be able to visit a site to see a slice of what he was fighting for was extremely important to me.

Up to this time, my backpacking experience had been adventurous, jovial, fun, party, exhilarating exploring so many parts and so much history of the continent.

Dachau was different. It was somber. It felt heavy. The bus that took about twenty of us there grew increasingly quiet the closer we got.

When we stepped off the bus, aspiring photographer stayed right by my side. I enjoyed the company at first, but quickly became annoyed as he did not stop talking.

What is more, every time I stopped to take a picture, he stood next to me and took the exact same picture. He mimicked where I stood, or kneeled, and asked me what camera settings I was using.

I remember thinking that he was going to go home with a roll full of my pictures taken with his camera. That is fun memory now.

After a while I told him that I was going to do some exploring on my own and I would meet him back at the bus stop.

As I walked on my own with my own thoughts, I recall being overwhelmed thinking of all the death, fear, and evil that existed here. I took pictures as a journalist would, detaching my emotions from the task at hand to document what I saw so that I could share with others what existed, just like the Army photographers did when they arrived to liberate the camp.

Dachau was one of the first concentration camps built by the Nazi’s, opening on March 22, 1933.The camp was initially intended to intern Hitler's political opponents, which consisted of communists, social democrats, and other dissidents.[6] It is located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory northeast of the medieval town of Dachau, about 16 km (10 mi) northwest of Munich in the state of Bavaria, in southern Germany. Prisoners lived in constant fear of brutal treatment and terror detention including standing cells, floggings, the so-called tree or pole hanging, and standing at attention for extremely long periods.[9] There were 32,000 documented deaths at the camp, and thousands that are undocumented.[10] Approximately 10,000 of the 30,000 prisoners were sick at the time of liberation.

Dachau was the concentration camp that was in operation the longest, from March 1933 to April 1945, nearly all twelve years of the Nazi regime. Dachau's close proximity to Munich, where Hitler came to power and where the Nazi Party had its official headquarters, made Dachau a convenient location.

History will likely never know how many people were interned or murdered there, due to periods of disruption. One source gives a general estimate of over 200,000 prisoners from more than 30 countries during Nazi rule, of whom two-thirds were political prisoners, including many Catholic priests, and nearly one-third were Jews. At least 25,613 prisoners are believed to have been murdered in the camp