Visiting Dachau with Children
We could feel the place miles away. It was heavy.
We talked a lot about whether we should bring Noble (our 8-year old) with us to visit the camp. We went back and forth. He’s our little empath, and we wondered if the content and the ‘why’s’ would be damaging. We brainstormed ways to frame what had happened at Dachau - to start a conversation early in his life. Thankfully the curators of the site provided a map of areas inappropriate for children - which allowed us to build a tag-team plan.
We passed through the gates emblazoned with the propaganda that helped keep these places from the world’s eyes for so long - the gate read, “Work shall make you free.” The gate, in all its infamy, was smaller than I had imagined.
The gates of Dachau proclaiming: “Work shall make you free”
Impossibly large numbers were on my mind as we walked in the footsteps of the 10’s of thousands who’d lost their lives at the Dachau concentration camp; Lost in the most inhuman, unimaginable ways possible.
The place was stark. Light grey powdery gravel was everywhere. The open areas were enormously large.
We walked the long barbed-wire fence line, past the prisoner barracks towards another gated area where the gas chambers and crematoriums were located.
The barb wire fence and guard house defines a small portion of the larger historic camp.
Historic photos showing conditions of the time were placed along the way.
We parted ways at the wooden barb-wire tangled gate that framed the path to the gas chambers.
The gas chamber and crematorium building was low, casually officious and pleasantly landscaped - if I hadn’t known it was a place of mass murder it could have passed for a visitor center, or a parks building.
We walked through the building and paused in each room. I stood in the gas chamber, which were made to appear like showers, and just sat with the place.
Walking through the low-ceiling gas chamber with my teen-age daughter.
I looked at the drains on the floor, the chipped paint, the mechanisms tucked into the walls behind small discreet access panels that had delivered death, and the low ceiling that pressed in above me. I could reach up and easily touch the damp cement only a foot above my head. The ‘shower heads’ were spaced every 6 feet or so. I thought about the people who’d have been confused, scared and trapped here. I breath out a sob. The place remembered. I could feel it. I could smell it.
Just outside the shower room, there was a historic photo of the building taken from the outside. A pile of bodies almost roof high dominated the image, but what struck both Kaety and I were the lovely flower boxes that the SS had planted under the windows of the place. Pride in their work. My god…
Symone (my teen daughter) and I walked back out through the gate and met Kaety and Noble. While Kaety walked to the gas chambers I wandered the chapels with Noble. He lit candles for the dead. One candle he lit he held up and whispered to me, “This is for the kid I saw in the photo with their mom standing by the fence. The one the bad people thought was different from them.”
Our 8-year old lighting candles in the chapel in memory of the victims of the holocaust.
I closed my eyes and breathed grief. The weight was staggering.
We visited the three chapels across the back of the camp. Each one offered a place to deal with the weight. Each offered a different kind of symbolism to give the weight a shape.
Each of them was a work of art.
View from the center of the Mortal Agony of Christ Chapel.
Twenty minutes later I spotted Kaety in the stark distance returning from the gas chambers. Noble ran to her across the distance. She grabbed him up and pressed him in. I knew what she was feeling and thinking. She was replacing the evil with love and connection. As I watched their intimacy I knew we did the right thing in bringing the kids here…to experience the camp as a family.
Replacing evil with love and connection.
We visited the barracks, the bathrooms and dining halls. Historic photos lined the walls. The conditions they showed were horrific. In every photo I would pick out one person and feel them. Then I’d take in the ten people around them. Likely ten people that cared about each other. I imagined the perspective those 11 people had in a world where they were beaten, starved, tortured and lived in constant fear of a capricious death. I’d see those ten people and try to multiply them by one-thousand…attempting to make an impersonal number personal.
As we walked out we passed beneath a row of huge old cypress trees that ran down the middle of the camp. The trees provided shade and a place to lean on. We touched the trunks and thought of the heads who had rested there and wondered at the thoughts they had thought. Did those trees and the light they filtered offer any one a moment of respite in beauty before they returned to the horror of their day? I hoped so.
We paused in the middle of the camp and Kaety pointed around her at the infrastructure, “This was all planned. The spacing, the buildings, the gas chambers, all meticulously planned. None of this was happenstance. None of it rushed. All planned.”
There was so much about the place; the dehumanizing, the horror, and the hate was unforgivable, but in that moment the planning of it seemed the greatest crime, the greatest horror.
We stood and stared around us for a while, numb and overwhelmed.
Noble was dancing around in circles, counting rocks and singing. Life was calling us back.
Before we arrived, we had talked about how to explain to Noble what this place was about. As I watched him dance and skip I recalled what we had decided to say:
“We come to these places to remember and honor those who had to live through terrible things. This place doesn’t need anymore sadness or anger, it’s had plenty of that. What it needs is love, care and connection. We honor those who suffered here by loving more. Hate and anger won’t bring any of them back. Hate and anger is what lead to these terrible actions.”
I kissed Kaety, tears in our eyes. All four of us held hands and turned to walk out of Dachau.
We walked away, and held all those who didn’t in our hearts.
Tips for Visiting Dachau:
Dachau is a very short drive from downtown Munich.
Dachau was one of the first camps developed, and has a unique story.
Plan 3+ hours for your visit. The site is large, and the information dense. It’s also a place that demands pacing, not just to honor those who lost their lives there, but also to manage your feelings.
Get everyone fed before your visit. There are lots of fast food places in the area that will make everyone happy.
We decided to take our kids. We had some reservations, but the stewards of the site have done a nice job of recommending a route that avoids particularly graphic images not appropriate for children.
Spend some time before your visit getting clear on how you are going to talk about the place and its history with your children. For our 8-year old we established one narrative. For our 17-year old, who had taken world history and knew the story, needed less explanation and more modeling on how to ‘be’ with the weight of the place.
The crematorium and gas chambers are in a compartmentalized portion of the site. You won’t happen upon them by accident. We took turns walking through - one of staying with our 8-year old.
Save your visits to the chapels that run along the back of the camp for last - they are each remarkable works of art - we found them very inspirational and were designed to honor those who lost their lives in the camps, but also to help the living process their feelings.
Plan something chill in your itinerary after your visit. We had some drive time to talk, decompress and answer questions from the kids.
