Christopher Rowe

Ducking back across the border into Germany we spent the next few days in Munich. Our hotel, the ‘Royal’ was within walking distance from the main train station, which made for a nice change not having to bother with taxis at all.

The street the hotel was on was somewhat questionable, with a strip club and a few skimpy bars on either side of our hotel not that it bothered Michelle or I, the last place we came across with any form of adult entertainment was back in Hamburg with the Adult Christmas markets.

Despite the gangs that patrolled the streets at night and one poor bloodied up individual at the subway exit opposite our hotel receiving medical treatment (his trail of blood ran a few meters towards the escalators) we still felt quite safe. The four-man gangs would give you a wide enough berth when walking past them (it helped avoiding eye contact), the colourful fluro glows from the adult bars meant the street was well lit at night and the friendly skimpy girls waving at us through their windows as we made our way to and from our hotel. How could you not feel safe!

We arrived before midday into Munich, and unfortunately for us a little too early to check in. Leaving our luggage in the hotel foyer we headed out for an early lunch and somewhere to sit and go through various tour leaflets. Succumbing to the familiar aroma of KFC, we had a quick bite to eat there before walking onwards into Munich’s old square. The walk through the square was rather quick, as being Boxing Day nearly nothing was open, certainly all the tourist gift shops and mainstream shops weren’t open. Since there was nothing else to do we decided to join the locals (what few of them were out, along with the many tourists) and stop by the Hofbrauhaus (giant beer house). The menu options were plentiful and the beer kept flowing, had I of realised, I would of saved myself from the KFC and had lunch here. We both decided that we’d come back for dinner the following night.

The next day we set out on a tour of Dachau. Our guide was quite an accomplished bloke. His name was Marcin. He was a rather short bloke, a bit over weight, and sporting a long pony tale, not quite fitting the stereotype of guides we have had before, but he was very knowlegable. It turns out that amongst other things Marcin is a professional muscisian, knows a lot about German detention centres from the Nazi reign, and even cycled from one to the next, and to the next clocking up over 3000km doing a video documentary which he is at the moment editing. (www.marcinonabike.com)

We were a large group of about 30 odd people, Marcin welcomed us all on the tour and laid down some facts, one being that we would not get the opportunity of lunch during the tour and there was only one stop during the whole tour for a toilet break, which happened to be one hour into a five hour tour. He also said quite bluntly, that by the end of it you will not enjoy the tour and continued on saying that the last stop would be a walk through one of the gas chambers used during the occupation. Half the groups ears pricked up at this point, we all had a faint smirk on our faces, clearly thinking the same thing, cool, we get to finally walk through something interesting. Those same faces, including my own were expressionless by the end of the tour.

A train and Bus ride later we arrived at the town of Dachau. Although history has recorded Dachau as a site of one of the infamous concentration camps in Europe that the Nazis used to enslave, torture and commit genocide, the Dachau concentration camp is only a small part of the overall town.

The concentration camp was a converted ammunitions factory and like the many concentration camps that came before it and after it, came into being to solve the over population of the prisons. During its first few years of operation Dachau was home to hundreds of German prisoners. Our guide Marcin went on to explain there were three stages of Dachau, in fact, almost reflective of Hitler’s three phases of insanity. When Hitler took power he announced every German citizen to be an enemy of the state until proven otherwise.

Therefore the first residents of Dachau were German, specifically all those that opposed him, all those that didn’t vote for him. The second phases of inmates were those that had a disability or considered homosexual, specifically men.

Even if you were in fact a heterosexual you were considered a homosexual if you were over the age of thirty and not married, or knew of anyone in the theatre (an actor or actress). As everyone in the theatre industry were considered to be gay. Interestingly enough, Adolf Hitler loved the theatre and didn’t marry until he was in his 50’s, only days before he committed suicide.

The third phase of Dachau residents came in 1938 when the doors were open to all Jews. By then the prison, only built to handle merely a couple of thousand was coping with over a hundred thousand prisoners.

What made Dachau special from many other camps were the levels of physiological torture that was employed. Upon entrance into the camp, prisoners were stripped of all personal belongings, their bodies shaved with blunt clippers that would pull clumps of hair out rather than trim. The prisoners were then dunked into an acid solution to remove lice (a rather pointless exercise since they had just been shaved – but there to cause pain), they were then hosed down, and given moments to scramble to their feet, make their way to a table and select one pair of shoes, shirt, pants and a hat. If the clothes didn’t fit, if the pants were too short, or the shoes selected were both left footed, it was bad luck. Their last duty before joining the others in the prison was to stitch their serial number onto their top and pants, this was now their designation, their name meant nothing.

The only way you stood a chance to survive longer than others in these camps was not to stand out, for you were surly beaten for being different. Whether it was because you were shorter than your comrades, or if your shirt didn’t fit you properly. Therefore, those unfortunate enough to not select proper fitting and matching clothing before entering the prison grounds were already dead.

The psychological tortured carried out ranged from the most subtle of things to bigger and more obvious acts. Together though they all added up, demoralizing and breaking the human spirit to live on. For one thing, the prisoners were issued one set of clothes, pants, a top, shoes that were more like slippers and a hat. Each dorm room had a large proud hook next to the bed post, for hanging a thick heavy coat that the prisoners did not have. The bed heads had a built in shelf for the prisoners possessions they no longer possessed. In the winter, the windows were fixed open, and in the summer the windows were fixed shut and the heating was turned on.

Each night, prisoners could hear the screams and cries of a select few, which had been summoned to the ground keepers office to be further tortured and sodomised.

The prisoners were separated into houses or factions, each made up of a lead prisoner referred to as the ‘Capio’ and fifty to a few hundred regular prisoners. The SS had a simple disciplinatory measure, other than enacting their own discipline practices whenever it suited them the only other rule was, if one prisoner in a faction messed up, the entire faction was punished. This ensured that for the most part prisoners were exceptionally well behaved.

By the early 1940’s each faction had two rooms. A sleeping room and a much larger dinner room. Hundreds of prisoners scrambled into the bunk beds, usually four adults or eight children to a bunk. It was cramped, sticky and hot. If you needed to go to the toilet you dare not wake up a fellow prisoner, so you quietly did your business where you lay. This usually meant the lower bunks were soaking in the faeces of others by the end of the night. In these cramped conditions, disease spread quickly.

The only prisoner not subjected to those sleeping conditions were the Capio (the lead prisoner), he got to sleep on his own in the dining room, on a padded mattress next to the heater. In many ways the Capio, although a prisoner themselves, were as bad as the SS, as they had the authority to exercise their own discipline on their prisoners and they did, relentlessly.

Prisoners got one meal a day, usually a vegetable soup made of rotting vegetables. The Capio was the first person to get the food, and usually scraped all the floating vegetables off the surface of the soup before handing it on to the other prisoners, who in return got flavoured water at best.

Inside the prison facility surrounding the walls which were observed by seven guard towers was a deep trench, in front of that trench a strip of grass ran around the inside of the boundary about 3 meters wide. The facility was set up in such a way that it was virtually impossible to suicide yourself once inside, you would be murdered (brutally if possible) by the SS before you could achieve your sweet escape of life.

As I mentioned before, if you stood out in any way you would be targeted by the SS and most likely killed. If you lost your hat, you would get shot. If you answered back or disobeyed a guard you would be shot. If you set foot on the grass parameter (still some four meters away from the fence if you include the ditch) you would be shot for ‘attempting to escape’. The one thing Germans are really good for is paper work, and there was no exception for concentration camps. Every death had to be reported. This of course becomes time consuming. However very little paper work is required if the resident is ‘attempting escape’. Therefore the SS would taunt prisoners by throwing their hats onto the grass area and ordering the prisoner to pick up the hat. If you didn’t obey, you’d be shot for disobeying an order. If you did obey, you’d be shot for trespassing on the grass.

As the war started to come to its end in the mid 40’s as mentioned in a prior post about the Third Reich, Hitler realised the war was not going well and sped up the final plan of extermination. Several of the larger concentration camps, including Dachau, had gas chambers built outside them. The chamber setup was quite elaborate, all done in a rouse of delousing and cleansing prisoners, the chambers consisted of a undressing room, where clothing was removed, a waiting room and then the main showers chamber, complete with running water, as the guards would often demonstrate. As the prisoners waited in the shower room for the water to turn on, guards from outside would drop in crystals through secret shafts that connected into the shower room. At a particular temperature the crystals would turn into a gaseous form killing the prisoners. The prisoners bled uncontrollably to death, with blood pouring out of every crevice, until their digestion system liquefied into a running mess. The prisoners, crying tears of blood in the utmost agony as they excreted their own digestion system, stomach, intestines and all. Sometimes the guards would get the ratio of human bodies to crystals wrong and have to finish the job themselves.

The remains of the bodies were then thrown into the inferno in the next chamber and cremated.

I did a slow walk through each of the chambers, putting myself in the shoes of an unsuspecting prisoner expecting a shower and treatment. The shower chamber was pretty large, plenty of drainage below, shower heads above. The only natural light coming from the small shafts that the crystals were dropped into. We all left the chamber in a rather quiet sober minded state, it would be practically impossible to imagine without walking through the facility itself, standing in the room that had seen the death of hundreds of thousands.

When the Allied forces arrived and realised what disgusting practices had gone on here, the first reaction was to wipe it off the face of the earth. The surviving prisoners however prevented it, insisting that it be instead left as a memorial, to warn the future of the past.

We left the Dachau tour feeling quite flat, it seemed rather logical therefore to go to a raging beer house, drink copious amounts of beer and attempt to lift our spirits, which is exactly what we did. Unlike the Sunday afternoon the day before, Monday night was packed out. We walked to the very back of the bar, and around the corner, finally finding a spot by the rear door. After ordering our first round it became rather obvious why this table was vacant. With each person passing through the door coming in or going out, a cold, freezing rush of air would come in and hit my neck and legs. Just as you had warmed up again (as there was a heater on the other side), the door would open again and you would get hit by anther cold rush. Having caught something of a mild cold back in Vienna, the cold/hot rushes of air were having a more profound impact on me than anyone else and my mood had dampened more so, I was quite content to finish up and leave.

Fortunately, just before we had finished our drinks a bench capable of seating eight became free, Michelle and I instantly fled for it and got to it just before an Asian couple reached it. Not wanting to share with us, the other couple took our old spot. Later that evening looking across at our old table you could see they were both agitated by the cold gushes as the door would open and close. By then the bar was completely full, and so was our table. Sitting across from us was a German couple similar age to us, perhaps a few years younger, and at the other end an Austrian party of three. I had a small conversation with the couple in front of us, they seemed friendly enough, especially the bloke but I couldn’t understand a word he said, and he couldn’t understand me. Fortunately his girlfriend could speak a bit of English, where I then learnt that they were on holiday themselves visiting from middle Germany. I introduced myself, and mentioned I was from Australia. Something which her boyfriend misunderstood and later on attempted to introduce us to our ‘fellow’ Austrian’s sitting at the end of the table. The one word we both completely understood was ‘prost’ the German way for saying ‘cheers’. He started it the first few times, raising his litre pint of beer and saying ‘prost’, we’d all smack our glasses together, including the Austrian’s at the end of the table and take a drink. In away it turned into a bit of a drinking game, as I quickly caught on that every time someone said ‘prost’ we’d all cheer and drink, so I began saying it more often. It didn’t matter whether the others were in the middle of eating or in a private conversation, everyone would pick up their glasses, cheer on and drink. We ended up outlasting our German friends, but I think they were the real winners, as he had only drunk two litres of beer, on presumably a full stomach, whereas I myself had drunk three litres on a practically empty stomach… Oh my god, I was wasted… I cannot tell you how I got home, I am just thankful I did.. Michelle was the first to awake feeling fine, discovering that in my drunken haze coming back to the hotel, I hadn’t closed our hotel door. I woke up feeling very sorry for myself (for once) and didn’t at all fancy the thought of facing a full day tour to see Neuschwanstein castle (the Disney castle).