Dachau Tours

Dark History tours is excellent. We learned so much on the trip, going in both directions. Taff Simon is from Wales and besides being an archeologist, he has devoted considerable time with the history of WW2. Meeting with survivors of Dachau as well as with veterans. His passion for passing this kind of knowledge on to his tour guests is amazing. He even had a bag filled with various artifacts, normally items you would only see in museums. It impressed me!
https://darkhistorytours.com/tours-in-munich/

We used Radius Tours in 2019. They took us from Munich by train which we liked as some other co-workers of my husbands drove out at the same time to do it on their own and got stuck in hours of traffic. We thought they did a good job.

Thanks very much much!

I also chose to use Radius Tours and was very pleased with them - https://www.radiustours.com/tours-in-english/dachau-concentration-camp-memorial/ .

While you can do that tour on your own, I liked the fact that the guide was able to provide background information during the train ride to Dachau. I found the guide to be very knowledgeable and the pace of the tour was good (IMO).

Thanks again. Checked them out and looks good. Appreciate the feedback.

I was born during WWII and raised in the shadow of it. We learned all about the holocaust and concentration camps in school. One of the history teachers in high school had actually been in an Army unit that liberated one of the death camps and had pictures of it to show when we studied WWII.

I was pretty well acquainted with the subject and so had no particular desire to visit a camp. I visited Munich eight times before finally, in 2011, I went to Dachau.

I did the trip on my own. It was easy. I was touring Munich for the day and going to Freising that night to be near the airport for a flight out in the morning, so I already had a Gesamtnetz Tageskarte (all day pass for the entire Munich metro network). I took the S-bahn and a bus to the Memorial and back. Admission to Dachau, including the ½ hour documentary film, is free; all I had to pay was for the 2½ hour tour led by a guide trained by the Memorial to present all the info that the Memorial considers important.

I feel that the Memorial's own tour is excellent. Our guide had extensive training by the Memorial and "lectured" us for the entire 2½ hour tour. I fact, I suspect that 3rd party guides are mostly former Memorial guide lured away by more money. Accounting for what it would cost for transportation (which the 3rd party tours cover), which, if you are not using other transportation in Munich that day is still only about 10€/person, the 3rd party tours are about 10 times as costly as the Memorial's tours. No one has ever been able to show me that those tours, half the time of which are on a crowded, noisy S-Bahn or bus, are any better (let alone worth the extra cost) than what I received from the Memorial. I think that their biggest contribution is babysitting you to the Memorial.

I would strongly recommend doing the tour yourself.

some other co-workers of my husbands drove out at the same time to do
it on their own and got stuck in hours of traffic.

Driving out in traffic is NOT the only alternative to taking a tour. You can easily (and inexpensively) use the same public transportation that the tours use.

Once again, Lee has decided to completely dismiss the amount of study and work, as well as knowledge a guide doing a private tour does, without ever once, going on any kind of private tour like this. Lee has absolutely no idea about where the guides come from, he just decided they are former guides from Dachau.

Listening to a guide on a train is not difficult. The trains are not noisy. If they were, no one could have a conversation. So, rather than having 2-2.5 hours of learning while at Dachau, you get 4-5 hours.

Many people prefer a private tour rather than a group tour. They may have personal questions to ask a guide rather than in a group setting. A private guide can do extra research for you before your tour. Having been on group tours at Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrück, Bergen-Belsen, and some smaller KZ near Frankfurt, there is a big difference between those and the private tours I have been on at Auschwitz and Dachau. They were all very good, but there is no comparison.

Thank you for your input as much appreciated. Although we could do this on our by ourselves, we’ve decided to go with the Radius Tours.

FWIW, I didn't have any problems hearing the guide on the way to Dachau, and it was nice to be able to ask questions before arrival at the site.

Enjoy your tour!

The Dachau Memorial association charges 4€/person for the tour that they carefully designed to tell visitors the most important things about what went on at the camp. That tour took 2½ hours that were packed with information, followed by the ½ hour documentary film. That's the one that I took and feel was excellent and well worth the nominal charge. It's difficult to accept that, as Jo insinuates, that tour was practically worthless.

When you account for the ticket price of the transportation provided by 3rd party tours, their cost is about 10 times as much as the Memorial's tour.

I've never claimed that those tours might not add some value to the experience, just that I don't think it could make their tours worth ten times as much. I believe that the main value 3rd party tours add, the only real justification for their added cost, is to provide the tour-takers with assistance traveling to the Memorial. Even if the value of the 3rd party tour is twice what the Memorial offers, you are mainly paying a lot for their service of taking you there.

I think my opinion is born out by the fact that no one offers a high priced, 3rd party tour to people already at the Memorial or even in the town of Dachau. All of the tours I see advertised start in Munich and include being guided to the Memorial.

Lee, I said no such thing that the tours offered by the guides in Dachau were worthless. Please read my post carefully. I would never, ever say such a thing.
I pointed out the differences, between private and group tours, but never disparaged the guides. That would be rude. You, on the other hand disparage private guides all the time. Please stop it. They all work very hard at presenting a very difficult subject, every day. Imagine trying to do that.

I am concerned about the Memorial Camp Tour's 30 person limit, and they do not accept reservations. Will I be able to get tickets? Trip is in June, I need 4 tickets. Advising me to get there 45 minutes early doesn't exactly reassure me. Thanks.

When I took the tour, it was in 2011, and there were nowhere near 30 people in our tour group. Let's see if anyone has ever had a problem with a tour being sold out. I somehow think that there might me more guides available in that case, but I don't know, let's see what others know.

My experience with Dachau this past fall was as I had expected, overwhelming. You cannot escape the intensity a visit to this place hits you with.
We chose not to use a guide. Instead, we found our way there by bus and then followed the guidebook that was provided. There are signs everywhere that explain what is present. In the standing buildings, there are displays that are available to read. I believe they were multi-language, but I am not 100% sure, I was reading the German text. If you visit, you should take the time to absorb what has been carefully assembled. There is a lot there. There was also an informative movie that we sat through.
We were struck by the vastness and also the emptiness of the remains of the camp. Ultimately, we were simply overwhelmed by the experience and chose not to visit the site of the ovens. It was more than enough to know that they had been there, how they were used, to envision the march of the imprisoned from the trains, past the rows of neat and nicely maintained homes along the route to the gates and then the barracks. It was uncomfortable to stand on the bare dirt of what had been the main assembly area for the camp. Horrible really. I preferred to experience this reacting to what I was seeing and reading without needing to move myself along to listen to a guide. That's me...it's an individual thing. A guide would have given me far more information to absorb, but I am not sure that a guide would have benefited the experience.
That said, I remain annoyed about not being able to properly appreciate a Bernini in the Borghese because it was virtually surrounded by a tour group being lectured by their guide. In a timed limited access museum, guides may provide their tours with "an experience", but for someone who has come prepared, they are an incredible nuisance.

Thank you. I appreciate your iinput and perspective.

Thank you very much for your reply, Mack.