europe 2010: day 7

day 7:

We started off our day going to Dachau.

We walked the same path the prisoners walked while entering into Dachau.

Here is a map of Dachau. We weren't able to go to most of the parts of the camp.

Here are some of the original clothes. Sorry, there's kind of a glare from the glass.

Here is a map that shows how many people were killed in each country at Dachau. This is just the amount that is accounted for. Towards the end of WWII, they started to kill a lot of the prisoners without doing the paper work for them.

This is a map of all the concentration camps. There are a lot more than I originally thought.

Here are the ones just around Dachau.

Here is a statue thing that is supposed to show some of the ways the people were tortured. You can see the people.

Here is in the barracks. They would fit 200 or more people in one of these at one time. These weren't the original barracks. They rebuilt two after tearing all of them down for sanitary reasons.

This was in the barrack but I don't really know what it is...

This was the fence going into the crematorium. There was also a canal on each side. If this was the gate leading into another part of Dachau, I can't imagine what the gate going into the outside world was.

There wasn't a sign leading into here...but there didn't need to be...it was explainable enough on its own. The gas chambers at Dachau were never actually used for a reason nobody knows. But despite that, it was horrible in there. The evil that was there was palpable.

Can you imagine just stacks of dead bodies in here?

This was the new crematorium. They could fit three bodies in each of these, and they were not big at all. I think that I might be able to fit in there, so if you could fit three...you can see how small they must have been due to malnourishment.

The path above is where we found this...I don't know how many more there were but it looked as if the path extended for quite a while...

One of the guard towers that led into another part of the camp.

This is the Jewish Memorial there.

I don't really know what the significance of this was but this was the entire memorial...this and a scripture....

The Holocaust. Such a terrible event in history. Although it does seem a bit unbelievable, I don't understand how people can say it never happened. We are going to repeat history if we don't embrace the fact that yes, it did happen. I don't know how people can say it's wish-wash, that Anne Frank just made up a story, that the Nazi's never existed and that 6 million Jews were never killed. I just don't get it. How can you say that it never happened?

So I guess onto a lighter subject now.

This is a maypole. They are really popular in Germany and I believe that they originated from Munich.

So guess who can say that they hiked in the Alps to a castle in Germany in the pouring rain?

This is Neuschwanstein. It is also the castle in Cinderella. It is the coolest castle we went to...most of the other castles were really boring, but this one was absolutely gorgeous. I wish that I could have taken pictures of the inside, but we weren't allowed to...:( This is King Ludwig II or better known as Mad King Louie's third castle. He only lived here about 110 days before he was arrested (because the government didn't like him because he didn't like politics). Three days later they found him and his doctor dead by the river. They said that he "drowned" but we know now that he was killed...The castle was only 1/3 of the way finished so we only got to see the 6 rooms that were or were close to being finished.

Well, we hiked up a bit farther before we toured dthe castle, so there will be some more pictures of the castle later.

That's a really pretty waterfall that you can't see very well due to the fog...but trust me...it was beautiful.

When it's not foggy...this is supposed to be the best spot to view the castle from...

This is our salamander friend we found on the way up.

I had to take a picture of this poster so A. I knew how to spell it and B. so you could see what it looks like on a nice, clear day. (King Ludwig II was also planning a fourth castle which was in many of the paintings in this castle...)

This is the summer home King Ludwig II stayed in as a boy which inspired him to build the castle here.