I updated earlier this morning, but due to the schedule, and a desire for some time bumming around the ´Net, I have returned to make more changes.

Particularly because I have wanted to update on the tour we went on today. It was the only tour I dreaded, because I was afraid of what I could discover about humans, and about myself. It was of course the trip to the Dachau concentration camp located outside Munich.

Dachau was my preferred choice, if you could say that, because everything that happened at other camps happened at Dachau, albeit at on a smaller scale. It was also the first camp, and served as the SS training facility where they trained new recruits.

The SS handpicked their recruits from the Hitler Youth as long as they were between the ages of 16-24. They trained close to Dachau; the first places you see close to Dachau are the large white houses that were SS buildings. Then you pass through the famous `Albeit Macht Frei` gate, which reads in English, `Work will free you´. The Dachau memorial site was opened decades after the war and was designed by the prisoners themselves, a fact that settled my mind about the moral rightness of visiting such a site. Sometimes I felt that it was wrong to make a tourist site about something that is essentially a large graveyard. However, it is essential to preserve the memory of those who died without names or faces, because they were largely confined to barracks or mass graves.

There is a massive museum that documents the registration of prisoners, torture methods and camp life, designed to strip prisoners of their human dignity. You then pass into the barracks for special prisoners, a place where people were tortured or punished for breaking camp rules or where famous prisoners were kept in solitary confinement. Torture methods included dislocating shoulders by suspending people from poles and swinging them, beatings and forcing people to stand for long periods of time. Exhibits documented disease, hunger and overcrowding prevalent at the camp.

You then passed to Barrack X, the location of the gas chamber. I won´t write much about this chamber, but just that I found it unbearable to be in there for more than 30 seconds without contemplating its´ purpose, because it was so claustrophobic and dark. After thinking about what it was made for, I had to run. Dachau´s gas chamber was never used for the same large scale executions as those of Auschwitz, but walking to the crematorium was terrifying today.

We then passed by several memorials that commemorated those who had died, and those who survived, and then finally discussed the final days of the camp and the liberation by American soldiers.

All in all, it was a humbling and saddening experience. However, I now feel better equipped to deal with the darkest side of humanity, and that because I know this, maybe a small step has been taken towards the prevention of another disaster of this scale. However, maybe this is arrogance on my part, and maybe my visit was futile.