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Genocide,   the stench of death and eating lunch in a gas chamber..

YOU could forgive Gordon Hogan for feeling depressed about going to work. After all, the Monday morning blues affect the best of us sometimes.

But the rest of us don’t have to spend four hours every day in a concentration camp, walking through a gas chamber.

For Gordon’s work day takes him by train from Munich to the site where the holocaust began.

He travels along the same railway line which transported hundreds of thousands of prisoners during the Second World War, and gets off the train at the stop which marked the end of freedom for Jews, gypsies, priests and homosexuals.

He walks beneath the infamous entrance sign, still cruelly marked “Arbeit macht frei”, which means “Work makes you free”.

Then he gathers tourists from all over the world around him, and guides them through the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust.

For Gordon, who is a self-confessed history junkie, has one of the least desirable jobs in the world.

He is one of the leading tour guides at the Nazi death camp of Dachau. But the irony is, he loves his work!

Showing people around a former torture enclosure in which more than 25,000 people perished might not be everyone’s ideal career choice.

But for Tipperary man Gordon Hogan it simply doesn’t get any better.

Gordon, 29, who lives in Munich, knows everything there is to know about the dark history of the horrific Dachau concentration camp.

So who better to show the camp to the huge number of visitors who come to see it annually than the Templemore artist?

The Nazi death camp held 200,000 prisoners between 1933 and its liberation by American soldiers in April 1945.

Gordon loves his gloomy day job but still harbours ambitions to become a successful artist. He graduated from art college two years ago and has since exhibited his video and photographic work, partly influenced by Dachau, in Germany.

But his ambition is to bring his art back home to Ireland, and he hopes that an Irish gallery will invite him to exhibit his photography and video installations in his native land.

“My last exhibition was before Christmas and my work focused on Dachau and was inspired by the place. I spent half of last year going to Dachau daily,” he says. “I love history and politics, and they influence my work. But it’s still very accessible for people.

“I do miss home sometimes,” he admits. “I read Irish newspapers and listen to Irish radio on the internet. Today, I had an Irish couple on my tour of Dachau. Being Irish, they were surprised to have an Irish tour guide and I was very happy to have them on the tour.

“I’m living the artist’s life, but I am so fulfilled. My aim is to be a successful artist, and I’d love to take my work home to show the people of Ireland either next year or the year after. In fact, I’m planning to bring my work home either next year or the year after. I’m just waiting for a gallery to invite me!”

Gordon’s art work, which features images of Dachau’s watch towers and pictures of little children with Hitlerstyle toothbrush moustaches could be considered controversial.

But he believes that his work is as optimistic and positive as the former death camp which partly inspired the images he creates.

“People are really moved by visiting Dachau,” he insists. “These days, it is a life camp not a death camp. People respond to the information I give them, and it often changes their lives. They come out realising the importance of celebrating life.”

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