Visiting Dachau Camp

Entering the camp is free. There are English language tours by the Memorial's own guides at 11:00 and 13:00. I didn't have a reservation when I went there. I just showed up a little early (½ hr, maybe) and signed up. The Memorial also rents audio guides, or you can just walk around and read the signs.

Unless you have a large group (30), there are no reservations required or possible.

www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/tourssinglevisitors.html

Hi. When we visited by car a few years ago, it was easy. Easy parking, walk in to the camp and stay as long as desired. There was no ticket required for entry. Looks like that is still the case - see web site kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de Enjoy your trip!

Thank you Bob and Lee above for your feedback regarding the Dachau camp. We will follow your advice. Sara.

Can anyone verify if Dachau is open on Mondays? The website states it is but other sources say it's closed. Thanks.

"Other sources" are wrong. It's open every day from 9am to 5 pm. It's the archive that is closed on mondays (and on weekends).

One concentration camp in a lifetime was more than enough for me. I can't imagine that a second would yield any new, interesting insights.

I have found each of them to be very different. Bergen Belsen was not like Sachsenhausen or Dachau and certainly Ravensbruck was not like any of them. Treblinka and Sobibor are nothing like Theresianstadt, and Auschwitz stands alone. The smaller subcamps and gathering ghettos like Riga, Minsk or Lodz each have their own history to them too. Why and when were they built, who were they for? What happened at the end of the war? Who freed them? Where did they go?
They each have very individual histories. For those of us who study history intensely, we can learn from each of them.

It’s super easy. Use RS guide book to navigate. Train to Dachau then local bus. Save time to have lunch and explore the city.

Of course every camp is different and has a different history. And if you are truly interested in revisiting that dark experience time after time to get all the gruesome details, the camp memorial sites will not hold you back.

But for most tourists on vacation in Europe - or even those who came to learn, which is probably rare - visiting multiple concentration camps is not a necessity for learning. Even German citizens, who in school are (quite rightly) required to visit a camp (usually Dachau,) must visit only one. Like we do, they learn about Dachau and the others in school. The funny thing to me is that most Americans, if they know anything at all about German history, already know about WW II, Hitler, Nazis, concentration camps, and the Holocaust. Yet rather than create an itinerary to explore some OTHER period of history, they flock to what they already know... the Eagles Nest, the Nuremberg rally grounds, Dachau, Hitler's Berlin bunker... Maybe if I were a Holocaust victim or relative, or a Holocaust historian, I'd be more into a trip with all that Nazi stuff, or one of those Holocaust tours that visit multiple camps. But I think such itineraries over-magnify a short historical period and thus distort German history rather than teach it. Prison tours, cemetery tours, death camp tours.... they're not for most of us.

To some extent I think Rick overemphasize the Nazi and Holocaust components in his media and guidebooks - and I think some of his followers follow too narrowly, trying to see ALL the things Rick recommends within a certain area - even if they've already done similar in the past.

German students are NOT required to visit a concentration camp. That is a fallacy promoted by Rick. No idea who told him that, but it is incorrect.

"German students are NOT required to visit a concentration camp. That is a fallacy promoted by Rick."

I wasn't aware that Rick had commented on the German school curriculum at all.

I dislike inaccuracy on my own part, so I dug around a little and I think you're correct that camp visits are not yet a nationwide mandate in German schools (although I'm sure I read or heard somewhere that they were.) Nonetheless, they are currently mandatory in some places, and nationwide compulsory visits are presently under discussion. German school group outings to the camps have been commonplace for quite a long time. Curriculum frameworks in some states including Berlin and Sachsen mandate an excursion to a "Holocaust memorial site" or other site where the history of NS terror can be experienced. This results in lots of school groups at the "Topographie des Terrors" and the Sachsenhausen concentration camp as well as some other smaller sites. Dachau KZ hosts around 4,000 school groups annually, and these pupils account for a third of all visitors there. Also, the education frameworks in Germany commonly recommend outings to concentration camps and like experiences and fund those outings.

Anyway, my actual point was that no German student (AFAIK) is required to make MULTIPLE visits (like some tourists do.)

Well Russ, my kids grew up in Hessen in the public school system and at no time were any trips to any Holocaust memorials or KZ ever made. Is this a required subject in school and is there lots of emphasis made about it? Yes it is, but they had no field trips. This kind of visit will never be made compulsory.
Yes, there are lots of school groups at all of these KZ, but none of the German states has this as a required field trip.

Frankly, I resent your snide comments about tourists or visitors to Europe visiting multiple KZ. Who are you to judge people and their interests? Perhaps they have multiple family members that were in multiple KZ. Or even one family member that was moved from one KZ to another. This is not uncommon. Even Anne Frank was in 3 different KZ. Perhaps they are studying about the Holocaust for their degree or they are teachers that want to be very informed to pass on this knowledge to their students.

I know many travelers who've visited KZ in Poland and Germany in different visits. Asking why someone visits those is like asking why travelers visit multiple plantations in America or why people visit Madame Tussauds in various cities. Different strokes.

I hope the OP found their answers to Dachau.

I would like to add a comment/reply to Russ above. Russ, your usage of the words "over magnify" was extremely offensive to me and anyone that has a family connection to this horrific period. There is nothing "over magnified" about a brutally and inhumanity that even over 70 years later can't be explained. It is not just a "short period" as you stated but a painful hard to forget. I started this post above and we visited Dachau in June. It was my 4th camp vist and correct, they are all different. Visiting Dachau is easy with or without a car, Auschwitz is more complicated. However Russ, I suggest you never should diminish the suffering of anyone with empty words. Thank you.

This is now my response to ms Jo comment to Russ.
I am fully in agreement with your response to Russ. See my response to him too. I took great offense to his choice of words, which are indicative of where his mind is. My family suffered from the Holacaust, thus I did too. Anyone who tries to minimize it or deny it for that matter, is another one who might contribute for it to be repeated. Never forget!

I think visiting camps is a good thing. We who live in a comparatively sunny time of the world do not remember, in the most direct observational sense, the terrible events of 70 years ago.

There are many reasons to visit camps. I have been to 2 - once when I was 8 in 1961, once in 2011 with my adult children and wife. Camps are all different - some have more complete documentation, different memorials. But if people want to visit several, I don't see an issue.

Hm, I'm feeling a lot of intolerance for what I think is a very reasonable perspective. Maybe a rewording...

Like I said, go twice or more often if you really want to. I completely get it that certain individuals and groups might want to - and I'm judging no single individual at all. But if you aren't sure how to spend your time in Germany (and many posters here are not) then don't just pick up a guidebook or two and think you're getting a balanced view of German culture by including all the WW II and Nazi sites in them. I think that for the average visitor, it's quite dark and definitely a bit of "niche" tourism - not what the average vacation is made of. And with hundreds of years of German history ripe for exploring, it's a shame to me that other historical periods are "underemphasized" in contrast with this one very ugly period. As a student of German history and literature myself, I think it's a shame to walk away from a visit to Germany with only a few beer halls and Nazi horrors in one's head, when in fact the bulk of German culture is and for centuries has been far more colorful, interesting, forward-looking, positive - and instructive.

Whether you agree or don't, I hope you find that understandable and worth considering. Sorry if you don't.

I know for a fact ie based on the secondary school experience of a woman (in her mid-60s now ) having grown up the former East Germany (I made it a point to ask her point blank) whether seeing a concentration camp was mandatory.

So, before she was done with sec. ed (Gymnasium), she had gone to three in the east...Sachsenhausen, Ravensbruck, Buchenwald. All were required. That was in the commie East German single party police state.

After the Wende/reunification, her daughter was growing up. Visiting a camp was mandatory for the daughter too as a Gymnasium pupil in Berlin.

Towards the end of my first trip over in 1971, seven weeks already in Germany, I was in Munich, the last visit/hostel in Germany. At the HI hostel were 2 German school groups on a field trip (Klassenfahrt) in Munich, one from the Ruhr, both Gymnasium groups, whose itinerary included going to Dachau. Obviously, the HI hostel was packed with American backpackers (I was one of them) and these two German groups. (Very interesting to see the interaction between the Americans and the Germans...or the lack of it).

I made it a point to hang around with several of those kids on the field trip, they were three years younger than I. Whether their trip to Dachau was mandatory or picked by their accompanying teacher, whom I met too, I don't know, never asked. I did talk to them after the visit to Dachau, with one at length.

On camp visits maybe it depends on the particular Länder. I'll ask about Hessen.

When stationed in Germany in the 1970's, the wife of a fellow officer told me I should read 2 books that she had about the concentration camps. The subject was not new to me as I had read "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". Still, the personal stories and pictures, and the horrifying statistics (like how may tons of gold were "mined" from the dental work of camp inmates) were overwhelming. Further, I believed that if you set up concentration camps for minority (religious or racial) groups in America, you would find volunteers to act as camp guards.

I feel the subject is as valid today in the USA as it was in 1933 Germany. Having an interracial family, I take it personal.

Even having said all of that, it seems to me that Russ is being unfairly attacked as too much is being read into his comments. I have not visited any concentration camps. I take the subject and the history very seriously. I still do not choose to visit a death camp as part of my vacation.

Like anyone else I know Americans who have visited the camps in Germany and Austria ( Mauthausen) and I know Americans who do not choose to go visit them, never went to one, mostly they cannot take it, too depressing, too horrific, etc, and there are those (a few) who aren't interested.

But you cannot let any of the actions of Germany to be forgotten. I
know German people who think just that way. They too have guilt for
what happen. One German friend told me it would be 100 years before
they would forget it.

Your comment is unclear to me. Do you mean the Germans you know today DO feel guilt? DON'T feel guilt, but should? That they hope it will all just be forgotten?

I happen to think modern Germany over the last 70 years has done a remarkable job of reminding its own citizens of its responsibility for WW II genocide and the Holocaust in particular. Credit where credit is due. Can the same be said of its Fascist allies Japan and Italy? Do we hold their governments and their people to a similar standard?

There is some truth in your German friend's comment. 100 years is a long time and it's quite natural that the Germans born tomorrow will have children of their own when 100 years are up - and also quite natural that those children will not care much about their great-great-grandparents' generation...

I was stationed in Germany in 1967, 1968, 1969. Traveled over 20 trips
in the last 25 years. Not one single trip did we not visit a camp or
cemetery or memorial dedicated to the fallen.

(Memorials and camps in GERMANY, right?) Germans did not shrink from their responsibility... It was the GERMANS who put together the educational exhibits and memorial sites - in part for victims and their families, in part for those who might need reminding most... the GERMAN people. Unless Germany suddenly tears them all down, they will still be there 30 years from now; 4,000 school groups of German children per year will still be guided through Dachau, even those who don't care much about what happened 100+ years ago. Credit where credit is due.

There is one group that should probably be forced to visit multiple camps - the Holocaust deniers.

There are Germans who believe in the concept of "collective guilt" ( Kollektivschuld), among them historians too who believe that Germany had a "Sonderweg", a special path in history that led to Hitler and Nazism. There are Americans who believe in collective guilt, among them historians.

On the other side, there are German and Anglophone historians who reject that concept of collective guilt and the "special path" interpretation as it pertains to Germany. There is guilt by commission and guilt by omission.