Dachau

Even through everything you read and learn about the concentration camps and what occurred there, nothing can prepare you for visiting a camp. Today we went to the Dachau Memorial which was one of the camps in Munich first constructed in March 1933 in a factory. From 1937 to 1938 the camp was re-built to house 6,000 people. When the camp was liberated on April 29, 1945, it was over capacity with more than 32,000 prisoners. Even though the people were liberated, many died from the disease and malnutrition suffered at the camp.

During the re-building in ’37-’38, a fence was built surrounding the camp to make escaping impossible. The fence made with barb wire was watched by SS guards and any prisoner who entered the prohibited zone was fired upon. Some of the prisoners entered this zone to end their misery at the camp. The first people brought to the camp were not Jewish, but people who spoke out about the government. Later people of religious affiliation and other backgrounds were brought to the camp. Originally Dachau only housed men, but later some women were brought to the camp.

Thought the camp had gas chambers, they were not used for mass murder. When the chambers were used, the prisoners were told that they were taking a shower and shower heads were in the rooms to make it look the part. In the crematorium area people were killed by execution or other murder techniques. Approximately 11,000 prisoners were cremated during the camps operations.

In the beginning, the camp was used as a “prevention” center where people were brought to show them how bad it could be if they continued their behavior and typically they changed their behavior when released. Prisoners at the camp were worked from 4 in the morning until 9 at night. If there wasn’t useful work for them to do, they were forced to exercise all day. Upon arrival the guards decided what work and place you would live in.

The camp was visited to see how people were being treated and what type of people were being held. To make things look in their favor, the SS had designated barracks that were nicer and groups of certain stereotypes present during these visits so that people would think that the prisoners were treated well and that they needed to be held. The camp did have an infirmary with a dentist. One visitor commented that the prisoners got better dental care than outsiders, but what they didn’t know was that the dentist was there to pull out any gold teeth the prisoners had.

Before leaving we viewed a twenty minute video that documented life and the happenings in Germany, but particularly in reference to Dachau. It is unimaginable that people could work at a place where they killed so many people and just hauled them off or burned their remains. Even after visiting I don’t think that the situation makes sense as to the enormous number of people who were affected by these camps. At Dachau alone there were more that 206,000 people registered to have been there when it was liberated.