On the third day of a trip to Munich where we attended a Cardiology meeting, our group of cardiologists visited the picturesque medieval town of Dachau. Around  20 kms from Munich, Dachau appears like a sleepy and laid-back little town. Yet, this lethargic and seemingly serene façade has its ‘ugly’ side. Outside its town center lies the world’s enduring testimony to Adolf Hitler’s brutal reign, the Dachau Concentration Camp. It was constructed as a memorial site in 1965, almost two decades after the US armies freed the camp of thousands of sick, emaciated, disoriented, and exhausted prisoners.

As a training ground for brutality for other German torture facilities, Dachau was the model camp for similar prison camps that would arise all over Europe in the next 12 years. Here, Nazi soldiers would learn the ways of brutality and tyranny from the SS. No wonder, Dachau was referred to as the ‘Academy of Terror’, regarded in history as the parent of all torture camps. Constructed by Hitler two months after he became Chancellor of the German Reich in 1933, Dachau is an eerie reminder of German’s fascist dictatorship.

With this historical perspective in mind, entering the concentration camp is an actual walk along the paths which thousands of prisoners took many decades ago – dressed in loose, striped, and torn garments - in the constant scrutiny of sinister stone-faced soldiers.

A German phrase, Arbeit macht frei, greets  everyone who enters the gate of Dachau concentration camp. It literally means  “work liberates” or “work makes one free”. The slogan can also be seen in many other  Nazi concentration camps, including  Auschwitz.

As one traipses through the sprawing grounds and the restored barracks and buildings of Dachau, one gets to confront face to face the actual torture sites, the hanging poles, the congested two decker barracks, the medical experiment chambers, the execution sites, the roll call grounds.

This is where everything happened. This is the site of all ethics-defying and  horrific human experimentations, atrocious mass executions and ingenious suicides when prisoners could not take it anymore. (Think suicide via a waist-high water  faucet and a cord. In the blurred eyes and woozy states of the prisoners who could not take it anymore, any manner of dying was far better than any second of living.)

A depressing and moribund testimonial to the persecution of thousands of German prisoners, Dachau is sure to  impact on even the most jaded and nonchalant visitor. With panels and walls of exhibits of personal testimonies, as well as cabinet displays and drawers housing personal mementoes (IDs, name tags, prisoners’ clothes, belts, dentures)—this is a chilling exhibition  of German war  atrocity at its shrilling worst.

Three hours into the camp, I was still breezing only halfway  through the exhibits and was just about to throw my hand up in the air, to declare  I had enough already, then here came a colleague telling me it was time to go.

“Where?” I asked? “Shopping!” I was told. Expectedly, a number of colleagues in the group also had an emotional overload after  the camp tour. Nevertheless, everyone surely had a clear picture of how life was when Nazi rulers exercised the utmost in brutality on everyone the Third Reich considered criminals and enemies – German dissidents, Jews, gypsies, outspoken clergymen, artists and professionals, Jehovah’s witnesses, Polish civilians, and  homosexuals.

Back to the city proper of Munich once again, it was time to grab some cheese, Munchen soccer balls and shirts for my sons and  an authentic German dress for my daughter Sofia’s forthcoming United Nations presentation.

For the first-time visitor to Munich, one might be advised against having a visit to Dachau as the highlight  of his stay in the city. One should always leave Munich with happy and pleasant memories of awesome sights, breathtaking palaces, gastronomic delights and thirst-quenching Heineken beer.