Visiting Dachau

Only you know your child and what they can/cannot handle. Having visited both the Holocaust Museum in DC and Dachau, I will tell you I found the experiences to be very different. The sheer enormity of Dachau is chilling. Being there feels different. The guides are excellent but the content is disturbing. If you skip parts of the tour you won’t have the same experience. The museum photos and videos are very disturbing, but I think an essential part of truly understanding the place.

Another question to consider is your child’s ability to listen to a guide lecture, walk long distances, etc. I do believe that the age limit exists in part so that children don’t interrupt and disturb others who are making a serious visit to a memorial. We went with a 15 year old, who was mature for her age and able to take it all in.

My suggestion would be all or nothing. If you’re concerned about taking your almost-12 year old, and understand the age limit has been carefully set, have some of your group attend while one person does something different with the child. Just my opinion, of course!

Follow the advice of the museum.

What horror movies or tons worse places like Dachau do with people is a question of empathic ability and the capability of a person to immediately create a distance to what you see and feel. Even some older people tell about problems to cope emotionally with what they saw and felt when visiting a former concentration camp. Children in that age are not able to protect themselves by creating a shield of distance. Do not gamble with your child's soul.

There are softer and better ways to make children familiar with this topic. One example are stumbling stones - even if Munich do not have much of them. Search for "Stoplersteine München". Berlin has many more of them (website). If you are there this might be the better way - or the Anne Frank Zentrum Berlin.

Thanks for the feedback. I would not be worried about him interrupting anyone else's experience, he is mature in that regard and if he went and needed to leave, someone would leave with him. We also have a 5 year old with us on our trip (2 families, 7 total people), so we are going in 2 separate groups already.

I personally think he should pass and his mom thinks he can handle it. But I for sure am not taking lightly the enormity of the experience and the potential emotional toll. That is why I don't think it is worth even risking it. But I just wanted to make sure I had the full information as we make that decision. I personally am not 100% sure our will be 18 year old should visit based off her emotional state and understand it's not simply just maturity and it could have a very negative impact on their life. However, I also understand the positive impact it could have if they can handle it, but that's a big risk that I don't think is worth taking. We can bring him to the Holocaust Museum in due time and not rush the topic just because we will be in Germany this year.

My husband and went when we were on the Best of Germany on a free afternoon. I was extremely disturbed over man's inhumanity to man and actually left the museum a little early. Did not enter the crematorium. Follow the museum's guidance. The pictures, displays, videos are very graphic.

I won't presume to speak to what your son (or anyone) can and can't handle. What I can suggest is this: educate your son gradually about the topic. See how that goes; how does he handle various pieces of information, stories, and first images? That will give you a better idea of what might overwhelm him. Include him in the process of deciding, give him the option to say no even part way through, etc. Heck, give yourselves that grace to say that this is too much and to walk away from an image, exhibit, or even the whole experience.

I will also say that you can do just the outside areas of Dachau and get a sense of the place without the deep dive; that might be a good compromise. The disturbing images are mostly inside the buildings. What cannot be replicated through images in documentaries, etc. is the feel. And that feel is more than powerful in and of itself. But the lack of specific images makes it easier to manage for many people; an open space of barrack footprints and trees is less overwhelming and softened by nature while still giving the sense of magnitude that can be remembered and accessed in later learning about the topic. At least that's my take; others may feel differently. I have taken students (14-18) to Auschwitz, and they handled the outdoor Birkenau far better than Auschwitz I. So did I.

There will be no right or wrong here. There is no right when it comes to the Holocaust.

Thank you HowlinMad! Testing the waters with education that goes further and further ahead of time is probably a good idea. Probably good for the 18 year old too, even though she'd have covered it in high school, just to make sure it's handled appropriately.

I think it's great that you're being thoughtful about this; much more thoughtful than I was when I was preparing our son to join us on a trip to the Normandy battlefields.

One idea that I'll plant with you - I was a very grown up 12yo so I assumed my son was just as emotionally capable of handling this stuff. Our birth order and just our overall upbringing were very different. He (thankfully) had a lot less scar tissue. I should have realized that.

Don’t assume that the 18-year-old’s high school covered the Holocaust. Some states require some Holocaust education as part of their high school curriculum, many others do not.

Here is a link from the U.S. Holocaust Museum with more info on this and resources for teachers and students:

https://www.ushmm.org/teach/fundamentals/where-holocaust-education-is-required-in-the-us

I find it hard to believe that the staff would check the kid's age refuse to allow an 11 year-old accompanied by an adult to enter all parts of the Dachau camp. It sounds like age guideline is just a recommendation, not a definite rule.

I have no kids and I am going to the site solo. I wouldn't think twice about taking an 8 year-old into the site if I had kids. I probably would tell my kid where I was taking them, and in advance read them excessive details or find us uncensored books as background information. If the kid had nightmares about or cried, so, my job as parent would be to just calm them and then act like everything is perfectly normal. I wouldn't expect anything less. I wouldn't expect us to have a good time. People are genetically programed to kill and hurt each other; people have been killing and hurting each other since human beings first existed. The banality of taking your kids to a nazi concentration camp. Why are parents always trying to "protect" kids by hiding and withholding information from them?

Howling mad gives excellent advice

It's interesting to see the conflict between every parent's certainty that their child is "above average" and their need to protect them. It might be appropriate to look at some contemporary photos to get an idea of how intense the images are. I'd also point out that there's a big difference between 9 and 14.

I visited last September. It is safe to say that I am well over 12. Even so, I found many of the images and stories quite disturbing. I chose not to enter the crematorium. I am going to say that it is more likely the level of empathy than maturity that an individual has that will be the biggest indicator of how the experience will be. My sister is extremely empathetic. She truly feels the pain of those around her. I would never suggest she even put her foot in Dachau.

It’s supposed to be jarring. It’s supposed to bother you at a foundational level. That’s the normal response for a mentally healthy person.

Mike L,
I agree that we shouldn't "protect" our kids from hard things that will challenge them and help them to ultimately grow....but you can't UNsee and UNexperience something like this. As a parent, I feel it would be irresponsible of me to NOT consider carefully whether my child/young person could handle such an experience. It's totally different from the images they see while gaming and even some of the more graphic war/drama movies. This is a whole other level of real-life violence, brutality and sick sadism.

I appreciate parents who are thoughtful about this subject. I had a daughter who had nightmares if she saw horror movies on TV. No way would I have subjected her to a Dachau experience. My son, on the other hand, ended up loving history & was fascinated by all things Nazi and WW2. As a young adult, he would have been fine seeing it--but as a nerdy 12-14 year old? Not so much!

It's good to see a broad perspective on the forum, though. While I don't agree with your overall suggestion, you bring up a good point about the sheltering of them from harsh realities. Each child is so different. Some WILL be able to gradually process the experience; but for the ones who WON'T be able to handle it, I would not want to be responsible for traumatizing them....and it wouldn't feel healthy to just act like "everything's normal" when they are distraught about the experience. (You would need to HELP your theoretical 8-year-old deal with his/her emotions and anxieties in the aftermath of the visit. The child would need you to acknowledge the horrors and empathize with them about the feelings it all stirred up. That's how we, as the adults in the room, support the younger ones--by helping them deal with the hard things.)

No need to rush ANYONE into this experience. Some kids/young people/adults may just need more time and maturity before they can realistically see, hear, and experience a place like Dachau.

Husband and I visited Dachau last year. We visited all of the other parts of the camp but left the museum about halfway through simply to being overwhelmed--and neither of us are exceptionally sensitive. It is just a lot to take in

So what we did is purchase the book that is the museum's catalog--all of the images and descriptions in book form. Maybe you could buy this before the trip and look through it to determine if it is appropriate for your younger one?

https://www.amazon.com/Dachau-Concentration-Camp-1933-1945/dp/3874907511

I will just add that these places serve a really valuable mission that is particularly relevant today. Leaders and those seeking power have demagogued, stoked fear and blamed various groups for millennia. It’s really quite effective.

Visiting these places is about as far from a vacation as you can get, but it’s really worthwhile. We definitely want to support their efforts with our money and voices. And more to the OP’s point; a big part of that is ensuring that the collective memory gets passed on to future generations.

I’ll also add that www.auschwitz.org is a great resource. There is a section on that site for teachers that might be particularly useful for the OP or anyone else with school-age visitors.