Apartments and even a convent stand just outside the Dachau camp's borders today; factories stood near the camp when it housed over 200,000 souls during its miserable peak. As it does today, a town existed outside the perimeter.
I visited the World War II era concentration camp in the spring of 2006 with a group of students from Texas on an EF Tours educational trip that included stops in France, Austria, Switzerland and Germany. Much of our trip was light hearted: students sampled crepes in Paris and aaah-ed at the Alps.
The Texas City teacher designing the trip, which was titled "Traveling Through History," also chose a stop in Germany's Dachau as part of the traveling curriculum. We visited on a cold Munich afternoon; snow threatened and it was almost possible to imagine living in this dreadful place with an empty belly, wearing rags and in the care of sociopaths.
Let tomorrow's leaders heed the message from Dachau:
- "May the example of those who were exterminated here...because they resisted Nazism help to unite the living for the defence of peace and freedom and in respect for their fellow men."
- --From sign near entrance to Dachau