Concentration Camps

Dachau is in Germany, outside of Munich, not Austria. We went with a local tour company who gave us a very meaningful experience. I have not been to Mauthausen.

I know Dachau is in Germany. I was trying to specify that Mauthausen is in Austria as this is the Germany board.

We went to Mauthausen on our tour. It was sobering and a solemn experience. I recommend that you do go to one, but I cannot compare them.

Julie, it depends on your level of interest and knowledge of the history, as well as your time and itinerary. I've been to both. They're different experiences and both worth seeing if you can. Some people can't handle more than one such place. If I had to choose, however, I'd choose Dachau, just so you can see how this evil place was right in the middle of a normal-looking town. Read up on both places and see if either speaks to you.

In this rare case I might choose the one that does not speak to you. It is really no fun. Some empathic and sensible adults report about feeling unwell continuosly after visiting such a place.

If it is of interest for you Dachau was the prototype of such a camp. It was also used for PR purposes to present a "normal" concentration camp to non-German journalists before beginning of the war.

If I recall correctly you will be in Munich for several days. Using one of them to go to Dachau will allow some decompression time, which you will need before you continue your trip. You will note that Dachau was the central camp in a complex network of work camps throughout southern Germany providing slave laborers used by famous companies. Going to both will depress your spirits for the whole trip in my opinion.

Julie,

If you have the time and the interest, why not go to both. Dachau was the first camp, opened in 1933, so it provides some insight into how the other camps evolved.

Having been to three.....Dachau (3 times on 3 different tours), Sachsenhausen (near Berlin), and Terezin (near Prague).....they were tough visits. I would choose one....depending on your time. I took an early morning train out of Munich to get Dachau. It is not very far. I got there when it opened. There were not so many tourists there yet. They have an audio guide that I liked a lot. I was back in Munich by noon.

Yes.....do plan something less intense for the rest of the day. I watched the surfers in the Englischer Garten for a couple of hours. Saw the BMW Welt. Listened to the oompah band at the Hofbrau Haus.

Hope this helps.

Dachau is horrific, but if you want to see where several million were exterminated, go to one of the two Death Camps: Auschwitz or Treblinka.

Julie,

I have been to both and both have been very different and somber experiences.

Dachau is quite a bit smaller in physical size (from what I can remember, or at least that was my perception) than Mauthausen. However, Dachau was used as the model camp and sits right in a little town. As in you can see peoples apartment buildings and homes from inside the camp. One big thing to note is that, from what I can remember, Dachau was almost completely destroyed and has been rebuilt as a memorial.

Mauthausen is a little more rural and larger in size. Mauthausen is definitely a lot less touristy. A lot of buildings still survive that you can tour through and some hold exhibitions. There is a lot of ground to cover and Mauthausen does take up most of your day. This experience seemed more realistic to me and far more powerful of and experience. Just walking the stairs of death and imagining the horror that was once there is surreal.

Both are powerful experiences and do whichever fits your schedule best. I would recommend planning for one for now. Seeing either camp does take a lot out of you and has you leaving in a very somber mood. I would recommend Mauthausen personally.

I agree that you should visit one or both. While some find the experience overwhelming, I did not. Education ahead of time is important.

We visited Mauthausen in 2011 with my grown children. It was interesting, with a number of barracks still in existence, and good signage.

I visited Dachau as a child of 8, taken there by my parents.

Paul - since posters here usually caution children under 14 visiting Dachau, do you feel you were adversely affected ?

Julie - did any family member or friend participate in the liberation of either camp? Last year a friend whose father liberated Dachau chose to visit it.

Not in the slightest. I developed an interest in the Nazi era. I did not become a Nazi fan, but rather sought to understand how these events could occur. I also have family history in Yugoslavia. One Grandfather was in WWI on the Austria-Hungary side, the other in the US forces.

Many people think that children are traumatized by such visits. This is patronizing, and assumes things about children that are not true. Many children are interested in the world. Of course, part of the story is that a child of 8-9, as I was, simply is not able to emotionally understand genocide.

I don't think that a child is necessarily traumatized. Of course, at the time (1960 or so), we lived in Germany, and there were many memories of the war. One day, on a picnic, we went behind a bush and found a German soldier's helmet, with a big hole in the top.

In terms of the liberation, my dad's unit, the 42nd Division (Rainbow) is generally credited as opening one of the camps. Dad was not in that specific portion of the 42nd. Most infantry divisions in WWII were pretty large. The Rainbow Division flag is in the Holocaust Museum.

I've been to both and would recommend doing whichever one works best into your schedule.

Dachau - I agree with everyone's points above. The shocking thing to me (as others have mentioned) was that it was in town. People could smell what was going on. After it was liberated the Allies made the local town leaders come in to the camp to see the horror.

Matthausen - Was originally a "work" camp where they literally worked people to death carrying huge stone slabs up the "stairs of death" from a quarry that you can still view. As someone above indicated it is more rural and has many more original buildings. There are also a number of memorials from various countries to the countrymen they lost. Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal was a survivor of this camp.

To me the bottom line is to visit at least one so this piece of history is never forgotten.

"Education ahead of time is important." How true!

both are concentration camps. google death camps to see the difference. Dachau is touristy.

I honestly think children are more resilient than some let on. Certainly my parents taught us about the Holocaust at an early age and saw the footage.

As for Dachau being "touristy", well there are a lot of tourists and it's true that it actually wasn't a death camp like ones in Poland. But if you have the time it's certainly worth time if nothing else to see how close it was to a German town that claimed to "know nothing" about it. Also interesting to see how recent refugees and immigrants live in houses close to the camp. It's still necessary to see even as there are still Holocaust deniers.

I read an article today about a public school in Florida that allows children to "opt out" of Holocaust lessons because some parents don't believe that it happened. Crazy.

Dachau is NOT touristy. What an appalling thing to say.

Fully agree to Ms. Jo.

Over 32,000 people found death there in 12 years plus a lot more - unnamed and uncounted from not precise statistics (source: "Das war Dachau").

It is not only a question of age whether you can handle a visit in such a memorialor not, more a question of empathy and the ability to build and keep a distance between your soul and your visual and felt impressions. Even some older adults are not easy in handling the post-visit symptoms.

I had heard the figure of 45,000 to 50,000 as victims of Dachau. That's about the same as Russian losses after the three day battle at Tannenberg.

I mentioned that Dachau is touristy. When I first visited the camp in 1970, my wife and I and a few other people were the only ones there. We entered the desolate camp and it was a sobering and somewhat frightening experience. Just a few yards from the entrance of the camp there was a sign extolling the virtues of the town with no mention of the camp, like it didn't exist. I returned to the camp recently and found a huge parking lot full of tour buses. There is a bookshop and a bistro. This does not subtract from the solemnity of the camp, but tour buses are full of tourists who frequent the bookshop and the bistro. I don't know how else to describe the crowds. Another observation: security people in places like the Sistine Chapel and the tomb of St. Francis of Assisi are always yelling "silencio" but people talk anyway. You can hear a pin drop in any of the gas chambers of the Nazi camps. You will be in the presence of pure evil.

I saw Dachau in late August 1971, went there solo from Munich Hbf. There was a memorial sign in many languages at the entrance and other visitors too.

As a bit of an aside, a lot of people touring Europe want to visit the sites of horror, and that makes sense - never forget, etc.

I find people are a lot less interested in visiting sites that are equally important, and speak to a living Jewish community in Munich via the Jewish museum there. Or the Sinti and Roma museum in Heidelberg. I've known many groups who tour central Europe and visit the death camps there, but ignore the amazing medieval Jewish quarter in Prague, which also has moving memorials.

Something to consider, that in addition to witnessing destruction, you can also chose to learn about the whole of the peoples the Nazi regime tried to eradicate.