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May 22-29, 2007:  Belgium, Austria, and Germany

Memorial Day Weekend is always a good time for my son, Gabriel, and I to take off and explore some interesting places.  This year, we decided to head over to Europe and check out Southern Germany, Austria, and the Bavarian Alps.

Our trip began in Brussels, then moved on to Salzburg, Vienna, and Munich.  Along the way, we visited such interesting sites as Hitler’s Eagles Nest, Marie Antoinette’s Schönbrunn Palace, the concentration camp at Dachau, and many of the locations filmed in The Sound of Music.

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Visiting the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site.

The main gate.  “Arbeit Macht
Frei”, or “Freedom Through Work”.

On the roll-call area the prisoners were counted every morning and evening and assigned to their work details.

Schubraum.
The admission procedure to the Dachau concentration camp was completed in the shunt room.
 

The prisoner baths.  The original shower floor is visible.

There is a huge walk-through exhibit with tons of great information.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some of the exhibits are quite gruesome.

A moving piece of art in the exhibit room.

Executions were also carried out in the courtyard of the bunker
facility, between the rear side of the maintenance building and the prison wing.

The camp prison, the so-called bunker, was built during the new construction of the camp in 1937/38 and replaced earlier prison buildings.

Gabi explores the halls of the bunker.

It was used above all to punish prisoners and to extort
confessions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

If there’s a creepy place to visit, I haven’t found it.

The Holocaust Memorial.

The Holocaust Memorial.

The camp fence and one of the guard towers.

A reconstructed barracks building.

Located along the central axis of the camp was the main camp road, along which the barracks were built on both the left and the right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The camp courtyard.

The Jewish memorial.

The fence along the camp’s
border, separating it from the crematorium area.

The modern sign outside the building housing the cremation ovens says in German: "Think about how we died here".

The crematorium.

The original ovens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The “shower” room.

The sign says it all.

The new ovens were never used.

One of the guard towers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A stop in London on the way home.  Here’s Gabi at Buckingham Palace.

The home of the Queen.

Buckingham Palace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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