Today we went to Dachau Concentration Camp. I have quite a bit to say about it, so I decided to make it its own blog post. If you want to read about what I've been up to in Germany, you can click here or just scroll down until you see the last post. Also, consider yourself warned that this won't exactly be a pleasant read, but I hope you read it anyway.
As you may or may not know, World War II and especially the Holocaust interest me greatly. I've always loved learning about it and reading all I can on the subject. For this reason, Germany was the one trip I was most wanting to take.
I've always thought that I would love Germany, and after being here for nearly a week now, I can honestly say that this is one of my favorite countries. I like the language. I like the architecture. I like Germans. I just really like it here.
So the majority of this trip has been spent at castles, but today we finally got to go to a concentration camp. This is what I most wanted to do.
When we drove up, the first thing I saw was the cement fence and the tall guard towers enclosing the whole place. To get to the entrance, I had to walk down a beautiful tree lined path to the Visitor Center then to the main entrance of the camp itself.
One of my first thoughts was, how could something so evil have taken place in a setting as beautiful as this one? My next thought was my surprise at how close to the town this place was. The town of Dachau was right next door to the camp. Townspeople probably walked by this place every day without ever knowing what was going on inside.
There was so much false information being distributed about was really going on and the walls are tall enough that from the outside, you cannot see inside. They had no reason not to believe the reports from inside.
As I approached the gate, I couldn't help but wonder about all the many thousands of people who had entered here before me. So much took place there. The walls hold so much history. The gate reads, "Arbeit Macht Frie" or "Work makes you free."
Dachau was one of the first concentration camps in Germany. It was built in an old munitions factory from WWI. It was to be a camp for political prisoners, and was designed to house 6,000 inmates. After a few years, prisoners from other camps were transferred there and it became more diverse.
One of the largest groups in the camp were the Poles. There were also French, Italian, Roma and Sinti, and Soviet prisoners. Other groups included Austrian and German Jews, homosexuals, and Jehovah's Witness. (Although, in 1942, Dachau was declared to be Jew free.) Dachau was also the only place where priests were sent. At first, they were allowed to hold regular services and were able to receive communal wine and bread from the Vatican, but this stopped at some point and eventually, only German priests were allowed to have Mass. Although it was meant for 6,000, when the camp was liberated, it was holding more than 30,000 people.
Directly inside the gates is the Roll Call Grounds. The prisoners had to stand at attention for no less than an hour every morning and every night, no matter the weather, to be counted by the guards. If a guard miscounted, they would start over. If there had been an escape attempt, roll call lasted longer as a punishment. Some days, the bodies of men who had died that day had to be dragged out to be counted.
Inside the former administration building, there was a museum outlining the history of the camp and all that had gone on in the camp and in the world while Dachau was in operation. The museum went through the rooms where the prisoners had been admitted to the camp. In the room where they handed over all their belongings, there was a desk that held all the records of the prisoners, still in tact. We walked through the room where they were bathed and shaved.
The administration building faced the barracks. Behind the admin building was the camp prison, called the Bunker. Inside there were 137 cells. Half were used for punishment for the prisoners and the other half were for SS use.
I walked the the entire length of what was open to the public. It was creepy to me. Each cell was the same-- blue walls, a toilet in the corner, and a large, wooden door with a small barred window. At the end of the row, there were cells that were reserved for priests. In the last cell, there was a makeshift altar. In the other direction, there were cells for "special prisoners". These prisoners were treated relatively well and were not made to work like the other prisoners. One man who built a bomb to kill Hitler was held here. He got special treatment in that, instead of a single cell, he was given three adjoining cells.
It was dark in the building and it felt very sinister to me. I know that the people who were held here often committed infractions that were minuscule, but others really were criminals. After Dachau was liberated, the Bunker was used by the American military to hold Nazi criminals and later as a military prison.
Behind the roll call grounds, stood the prisoner's barracks. Originally, there were 34 buildings standing there-- 30 to house the inmates and four for various other uses. Today, only two are left standing. Inside, there are rows and rows of wooden beds, usually stacked three tall.
Barrack 30 was reserved for priests, 26 for internationals, and 28 for Poles. The others were a mixture of prisoners. In addition, each prisoner was required to wear a colored badge indicating which group they belonged to.
In some barracks, medical experiments were preformed on the prisoners. Typhoid was taking out much of the German army and was running rampant through Dachau, so the doctors were trying to find a cure for it. Prisoners were given outrageous amounts of medicine or untested drugs. Some were exposed to extreme cold to observe how the body responds to hypothermia. High altitude tests were preformed on some. The doctors even had aspirations of discovering a "wonderdrug" that would rival penicillin. Nearly 200 prisoners were experimented on with about half of them dying and and half being permanently damaged from the abuse.
The barracks were set in two rows of 17. The path between the two rows was called the Camp Road. After all their work was done and evening roll call was complete, the prisoners were allowed to meet with the other prisoners and exchange information and talk to people. "The "spirit of the camp road." as the prisoners expressed it, was a symbol of the solidarity amongst the prisoners which developed despite the omnipresent violence."
At the end of the Camp Road stands a large bell and Catholic memorial. To the right is the Jewish memorial and to the left is a Protestant church. These memorials are sacred and beautiful. They are simple, yet fitting to the environment in which they stand.
To the left, through the gate, is the path that leads to the crematorium. It was eerie to me to walk through the place where so many died and so many bodies were disposed of. There are 4 ovens that can hold 3 to 4 bodies at a time. Towards the end of the war, there were so many bodies that they couldn't dispose of them quickly enough. In an attempt to hide the actual number of deaths at Dachau, thousands of bodies were loaded onto a train to be taken away before liberation.
Also in the crematorium is the gas chamber. At Dachau, since it was a work camp and not an extermination camp, the gas chambers were never used for mass murders, only for individuals and small groups. It was chilling just the same. Above the door read, Brausebad, which means shower. Inside, there were fake shower heads. All of this was to prevent prisoners from suspecting what the room actually was and refusing to go inside.
I walked as much of the camp as I could before my feet froze. Then, I was reminded that thousands had lived here with fewer articles of clothing in their possession than I had on at the moment.
I wanted to walk every path and touch the buildings where they had lived. The people who lived and died there deserve to be remembered. They deserve our respect. We should never forget the things that happened there, even if it's painful.
I didn't want to cry when I arrived, but I did. I teared up when I read about the men who refused year after year to take the Hitler Oath and suffered for it. I teared up when I watched the documentary and saw the footage that was taken while the camp was in operation. The prisoners' vacant stares haunted me so that I couldn't sit still. When I walked down the Camp Road and the bell at the end began to toll, I cried. I sobbed. To be in this place where a glimmer of hope and joy lived in the midst of such oppression was incredible to me. Even though their lives were unbelievably hard, they still made friends and cherished the time they had together. They were each others support system. This struck me and I couldn't help but be moved by it.
The bell rang out as I walked the Camp Road and only stopped once I neared the end.
Dachau Concentration Camp was liberated on April 27, 1945, 7 days after Hitler's last birthday, and 3 days before he committed suicide. That day, the flags from all the nations who were represented by the prisoners were flown in the camp. More than 30,000 Jews and political prisoners were freed that day. The reported death count was 31,951, but there are probably many, many unreported deaths.
Even though it was bitterly cold and snow covered every inch of the place, I wouldn't have had it any other way. If I had seen Dachau in the summer, I don't think it would have seemed so bad to me. But it was bad, and it was miserable, but people survived and I'm in awe of that fact.
I was moved by the whole experience. In the car ride afterwards, I was silent because so much was still running through my mind. I learned so much and I was incredibly humbled by the experience.
I hope this post wasn't too hard for you to read. This was more for me to get my thoughts out, but I hope you enjoyed it and maybe learned something too.
Je t'embrasse,
Sarah
Click here to see the rest of the Dachau pictures.
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