Day 7 - 05.18.11: Dachau to Riva San Vitale
"Work sets you free"
This was our last morning in Germany, which was really sad because I was just getting used to German. But this was also one part of the trip I really wasn’t looking forward to … our visit to Dachau. It was such a beautiful day, the sun was out, the birds were singing, and there were so many colorful flowers. Whenever I picture a concentration camp, I think of gray skies, rain and mud. It made me feel a little strange that the day was so nice while we were at such a somber location. All the barracks were gone, but a model was built as a reference that you could walk through, and it felt cramped even with no one in it. Near the back of the camp, there were monuments erected for the different groups housed in Dachau. The last place I saw was the area that held the crematorium. When I walked into it, I thought of all the people who had been killed there. Last fall at Tech, I went to a presentation by a woman named Irene Weisberg Zisblatt who was a Holocaust survivor. She described the atrocities that happened in Auschwitz-Birkenau, but actually being in Dachau made the horror of the Holocaust even more real to me. The Holocaust would never have happened without the people who stood by and did nothing, or worse, went along with what happened to the Jews. I applaud the German people for preserving Dachau to ensure so that no one forgets what happened and hopefully to prevent it from ever happening again.
Gas chamber
Crematorium
Barracks
Never Forget!
International Monument
One of several churches
After the visit to Dachau I felt like all my energy was drained and so I slept most of the way on the train to Riva San Vitale. As we reached the Alps, the scenery was breathtaking. In Riva, we stayed at Virginia Tech’s Center for European Studies and Architecture (CESA). Tech owns a 260 year old building called Villa Maderni that serves as a dorm for about 30 students. Some of the other students stayed at La Pabiana, which are apartments leased by CESA to house additional students. The meals at CESA were served family style. Dinner that night was tortellini soup and chicken. The food on this trip has been FANTASTIC!
