The Wies-Dachau Experience

As I retraced my steps back to the car, I spotted a plaque set low in the pathway and I crouched to read the inscription. It said, in Hebrew and German, "with thanks for my dear father, Marcel Zuszmann, murdered by the Nazis, 11 June 1913-18 April 1945"

Entrance to Dachau and a gate's cynical message

In March, 1933, with the stroke of a pen, Heinrich Himmler established Germany's first concentration camp in the little town of Dachau, nine miles northwest of Munich. Up until this time, Dachau had a reputation for being a quiet and unassuming little place with vaguely artistic overtones and a history that stretched back a thousand years. But after Himmler's edict, Dachau would never again be remembered for its rustic charm. Today, despite a cheerful sign opposite the main gate inviting the visitor to see the "other", more civilized Dachau, only one image remains. Just hearing the name is enough to bring to mind a grotesque news clip of the 1940s, with its endless line of crushed humanity.

I was travelling in these parts and felt compelled to visit the camp - a combination of respect, remembrance and, I confess, insatiable curiosity. I wanted to see what a concentration camp actually looked like; Dachau, the prototype for all the others, was close by, and I took the time to see it. I'm glad that I did, although the experience was far from pleasant. As it happened, I had that very morning been visiting the famous church at Wies, an hour or so out of Munich to the west. I was thus able to experience, in a single day, the ultimate contrast between the sacred and the profane. That these two places, so close and yet so far apart, could have existed at the same time is, surely, one of the imponderables of our times. If you are in this area, I recommend you consider doing the same thing. The Wies/Dachau experience is both uplifting and profoundly moving; the day will stay with you long after the more oom-pah-pah aspects of your Bavarian trip are forgotten.

The church at Wies, Wieskirche, is justifiably famed and yet many people touring in the south miss it in order to view the better known Oberammergau, or the atmospheric konigschlossen - Royal castles - close by. But to miss Wies church is to miss perfection, a marriage of the purest light and rococo extravagance that, experts say, outshines all others in this part of the world.

A snack en route; "the church in the meadows"

To get to Wies, you leave Munich on the E61 and drive the fifty km to Landsberg. Here, you turn south, following the #17 until you reach the signposted turn-off for Wies, just past the little town of Rottenbuch. It's a very pleasant drive, through rolling pastureland, with a silvery, meandering river to look at en route- and plenty of roadside restaurants to take care of your appetite with hearty Bavarian fare. Allow a couple of hours for a leisurely drive, an hour in Wies to see the church and the surrounding village. The church was commissioned to be a pilgrim church in der wies, in the meadows - which is exactly how it is situated. Built by a craftsman called Dominikus Zimmermann between 1746 and 1754, the exterior is deceptively ordinary as you approach it through fields filled with grazing cows - just a white box in the distance, with a white tower on one side. A crowd will undoubtedly be gathering when you arrive, for people come from all over the country to see this exquisite interpretation of Bavarian rococo.

Rococo dazzles with a golden glow

When you step inside, the interior dazzles with its simplicity and style. Walls that glisten wedding-cake white enfold you and tall, leaded windows illuminate with a soft, clear light. Zimmermann's use of austere white provides the perfect setting for the church's rococo decoration - columns, balustrades, carved wooded statues, gilded stuccos and frescoes gleam like jewels. The place reminded me of a medieval prayer book, whose white parchment pages were adorned with rich, gilded illustration. Over all, Zimmermann has created a serene sense of space; one's eye is drawn upward, after the golden rococo feast below, to a dome as blue as the sky and to frescoes portraying Christ Returned in Glory and the Last Judgment.

The towering, overpowering altar at Wies church

As we stood, in quiet awe, a boy soprano sang, accompanied by a single violin, high above and behind us in the organ gallery. The packed church was hushed as the pure notes of Ave Maria echoed around the nave. Perfection. It's not surprising that Zimmermann became so attached to his masterpiece that he decided to stay on after its completion. He lived in a little house, next to the church, until his death ten years later.

From the church at Wies, I drove back to Munich - and to Dachau. The road to the camp leaves from the northwest section of the city; it's not a main highway, but it's a good road, and well marked. If you'd prefer to go by train, they leave Munich leave regularly. When you get to Dachau station, you must get a Dachau Ost bus. For a small fare, you'll be delivered right to the camp's main gate. The camp is open every day, from 9am to 5pm.

When I reached the town of Dachau, I took a wrong turning or perhaps misinterpreted a sign. In any event, I found myself in a parking lot at Leitenberg, the great, grass-covered hill which rises close to the camp. 7,500 prisoners, from almost every nation in Europe, are buried here. They died just before the liberation.

I walked alone up over the hill. There was a light breeze and the trees overhead whispered as my steps crunched on gravelled pathways. There are no headstones here, no memorial - just a tall, wooden cross and mass graves, fringed with well-groomed shrubbery. It's a quiet, melancholy place. As I retraced my steps back to the car, I spotted a plaque set low by the pathway and I crouched to read the inscription. It said, in Hebrew and German , "With Thanks For My Dear Father, Marcel Zuszmann, Murdered By The Nazis, 11 June 1913-18 April 1945."

A poignant reminder of terrible times

Built on the site of an ammunition factory, Dachau camp is large. Surrounding it is first a high wall, then an inner barbed wire fence, then a deep ditch. Watchtowers survey the scene. As I walked in through the gate, I wished for a grey sky, hovering clouds, mist. This blazing summer day didn't seem quite right, somehow. My first impression, once inside, was of a vast parade ground. When I checked with the camp map, I discovered that this empty space was once covered with prisoners' barracks. An avenue of poplar trees in the centre marks what was the lagerstrasse, the main roadway between the barracks. Each of these thirty barracks was built to accommodate 200 prisoners, but by the end of the war, up to 1,600 of them were jammed into each plain wooden structure. After the war, the barracks were pulled down, but one has since been rebuilt so that today we can see the conditions the prisoners had to endure and the wooden racks which served as beds for people- and lice.

Barbed wire, powerful lights - and the camp crematorium

The camp museum, in a building which originally housed the camp kitchen and laundry, presents very graphically the rise of Hitler Germany, the spread of camps throughout occupied Europe, "the final solution". It is an intensely moving experience to walk through the museum and see the well-documented evidence of Nazi brutality. Haunted faces stare back at you from grainy black-and-white blow-ups; there, inside a glass case, a striped prisoner's uniform, muddy and threadbare and over there, in another glass case, the records of families who have disappeared forever. A theatre shows a film, in several languages. It should be seen, if you have the time. The camp, with its three memorial chapels (the one built by the Roman Catholics a dramatic oval of stone topped by a crown of thorns) is an obviously sincere attempt to present the truth. It is a fitting reminder for future generations of what happened here.

When you leave the camp, you will take with you, as I did, a strange feeling of unreality. Just beyond the main gate is the busy road, a gas station, school children prancing happily, a man selling ice-cream. The sudden change of scene is odd, for you can still see the white-grey ash ground into cracks on the crematorium's concrete floor, the wall pitted by machine gun bullets, the gate with its cynical slogan, Arbeit Macht Frei, work sets you free. Over 200,000 people were registered here at Dachau and the deaths of 32,000 of them are recorded. But many came- and died - unregistered, so the actual death toll will never be known.

You turn from the contemporary scene. There is the hill of Leitenberg, rising from the Dachau plain like a great, green tombstone. The most beautiful memorial of them all.