Stepping Into the Past
Allow me to take you back to last Saturday. On the 13th I went on another USO tour, my third one. This one was a "Third Reich Tour of Dachau & Munich." Tom has been in DC the last three weeks and has one more week to go so a co-worker came along on the tour, using Tom's seat. The day started at 5:30 a.m. as we boarded the bus for a 2+ hours-long bus ride. We got caught in a couple traffic jams - 'staus' as they are called here - so it took a little longer to get up to our first stop - Dachau Concentration Camp. Dachau was the Nazi's first concentration camp and served as a model for all the others. The people who ran the entire concentration-camp system during WWII were trained here. If I recall correctly it opened within 4 months of Hitler being elected to power. Originally it imprisoned dissidents and political prisoners, and was a torturous labor camp. It was for men only. Dachau is the only camp that operated all 12 yea...