Gain insight into the Holocaust of World War II on this half-day tour of Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site from Munich. Travel by train and bus to the memorial site, and take a guided tour of the compound, a place of memorial and education dedicated to the thousands who were imprisoned and lost their lives there between 1933 and 1945. Learn how Dachau provided a model for all Nazi camps, and see the exhibitions and memorials, together with the reconstructed barracks and cells, as your guide provides illuminating, informative and sensitive commentary.

In the spring of 1933, the first Nazi concentration camp in Germany was opened northeast of Dachau. Initially planned to hold political prisoners, it soon became a model for all other concentration camps. It also served as a training center for the SS: the “school of violence.” This tour takes you from the center of Munich to the historic Memorial of the Dachau Concentration Camp. With specially trained guides, you explore a monument to one of history’s cruelest crimes.

Over the years, the Dachau concentration camp grew to a system of nearly 100 sub-camps. In its 12 years of existence, more than 200.000 people from all over Europe were imprisoned, and approximately 41.500 are estimated to have been killed. On April 29, 1945 U.S. forces liberated the main concentration camp in Dachau and ended more than a decade of atrocities and brutality. Throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, Allied armies ended the reign of terror and put an end to the barbarism of the Third Reich. The liberation of the concentration camps revealed to the world how unbelievably cruel the concentration camp system of Nazi Germany really was.

In 1965, on the initiative of concentration camp survivors, the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial was constructed on the site of the former Dachau concentration camp. Nearly 800.000 people visit the Memorial each year. Close to the old town of Dachau, it is located only about 12 miles (20 kilometers) northwest of Munich.