Originally Posted by
WorldLux
I'm not sure if you can appreciate Dachau (or any KZ for that matter) at the age of 10 to the fully extend. I agree, that you have to teach your kids about that part of the history as well, but I think, that it might be rather premature to do it at such a young age.
The last WWII location I've visited in the last couple of months was Hiroshima. It's an absolute must see while visiting Japan, but I've noticed that many children seemed rather bored by the memorial park and apparently simply didn't realize the importance of it.
In the end, it is however impossible to generally recommend visiting or not visiting Dachau with children. You certainly have to take into account the interests of your children.
If you think that Dachau is not suited for your children, you might look at alternatives in and around Munich. There's a Legoland near Günzburg, a Ravensburger Spieleland (Ravensburger is a very popular German brand for puzzles) near Ravensburg. If you want to stay in Munich, you can always visit the
Deutsches Museum: They have a huge selection of topics.
https://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/directions.html
Thank you for the information.
We do have a lot to do in Munich so Legoland wont be one of the things on our list, but I had a few reasons for sharing this place with my kiddoes.
For one, we live in a rich society with every comfort and many taken for granted. No matter how good we have been at parenting, there are some things young people just cannot yet grasp--like how easy life can be especially if you are doing well and nobody is sick or in trouble.
They kind of need a wake up call anyway, for a variety of reasons, and so while we are gone and family is house sitting our home and keeping each kid's room nice and cozy for our return by probably leaving some nice present behind, it is time for them to experience what will likely be just one half of one day seeing what life could be like if you lived back then, or even if you lived now in places like Syria, etc. Not every kid is happy or has both parents or even one. What you say or do could land you in prison or in trouble... that is not the case back home in our comfortable world.
My daughter is familiar with the Ann Frank house in AMS and my wife is Dutch so we have shared many stories of things, but my son thinks the Nazi flag isn't real because he saw it in an Indian Jones movie. So yeah, they need to see things I think.
I do not know if they would be bored and we certainly wouldn't be dragging them from one exhibit room to another to look at old photos or anything. But they need to see and understand what went on here and how such things could happen anywhere. The only concern I had was whether it was too much for them but I am getting an impression having read more on it that this is something only we can answer for ourselves.