Timothy Ryback meets the people of Dachau and discovers how the older generation deals with a past they knew first hand, and how the younger generations live life under its shadow. There are the mothers who drive to Munich to give birth so their children do not have Dachau written on their birth certificates. There is the constantly apologetic mayor who goes to Israel to say sorry for Dachaus sins when the majority of Dachaus living inhabitants were either not born or only children when the camp existed. There is the storm over McDonalds setting up a restaurant in the town and advertising `Only two miles from the camp! There is the strangest anomaly of them all that the town of Dachau is not even the nearest town to the camp in which thousands of Jews died. Alongside these stories is the story of Martin Zaidenstadt, a self-styled camp guide whose past is difficult to reveal and at times believe.

`Rybacks literate, gently rambling style provides an ideal medium for his journalistic persistence in getting to the heart of his story a heart that bleeds Independent on Sunday