June 20, 2023 - Germany
Dachau Concentration Camp

 

Easily the most disturbing thing we did on our entire trip was our visit to the Dachau concentration camp, outside of Munich.  I think everyone should visit one of these camps, if opportunity presents, to "show ourselves what we might be capable of"  -- Herman Wouk.  Dachau is "an effective voice from our recent but grisly past, pleading, "'Never again.' -- Rick Steves.

I thought I knew all about the concentration camps but actually seeing one was still jarring.

Dachau was the first Nazi concentration camp, begun in 1933.  At first it was simply an imitation of Lenin's gulags; isolation and terror dumps for political opponents.  But the Nazis improved upon what the Bolsheviks had done before them and Dachau's organization and routine became the model for all Nazi concentration camps.  It also became a training center for SS guards who were deployed throughout the concentration camp system.

We enter the main compound through the infamous iron gate with the infamous "Work makes you free" sign.
   
Now inside the main compound, looking back at the gatehouse and office building (Jourhaus).   The prisoners considered the Jourhaus to be the center of SS rule over the camp.
   
An aerial photograph from 1945 of Dachau.  The Main Compound, or prisoners' camp, is outlined in red.  I was surprised how small it was compared with the rest of the camp, outlined in green.  The green area was filled with housing and facilities for the SS, the infirmary, and various other facilities.
   
A model showing the Dachau layout.
   
We started at the south end of the main conpound where a long rectangular building called the Bunker was located.
   
The long and narrow bunker consisted of a few larger rooms at center where the guard, registration and interrogation rooms were located.  Each wing consisted of over 60 small cells.
   
Looking down the long corridor of cells.
   

One of the prisoner cells.  You did not want be in this building..

Georg Elser, the man who narrowly missed assassinating Hitler on 8 November 1939 by planting a timer bomb in a pillar of the Bürgerbräukeller beer hall in Munich -- a traditional Nazi party meeting place --  was kept prisoner in a Bunker cell like this in early 1945, until being murdered on 9 April 1945, four weeks before the end of the war in Europe.  It's frightening how brutal the Nazis were in trying to find out who was behind the assassination attempt.  They could not believe that just one man did it.
   
The big U-shaped "Maintenance Building" contained the kitchen, clothing supply, laundry, showers, and workshops.  The degrading registration process began for the newly arrived prisoners in the west wing (on the right).  On the roof of the building a text was painted in large letters, that all prisoners could see and bitterly contemplate during the twice daily, hours long roll calls:  "There is a path to freedom.  It's milestones are:  Obedience, Honesty, Cleaniless,  Sobriety, Hard Work, Discipline, Sacrifice, Truthfulness, Love of thy Fatherland".  The building was built by the prisoners themselves between 1937-8.   It now houses the museum which had a few artifacts but was mostly a "Documentation Center" with written material about Dachau and the concentration camp system.   Interesting but not much to photograph.
   
This is the original "Work Makes You Free" gate.  Incredibly the gate was stolen, and although it was recovered, it is now safely secured in the museum and a replica hangs outside.
   
Looking across roll call square at the Jourhaus and main gate.
 
Initially the prisoners were primarily German Communists, Social Democrats, trade unionists, and other political opponents of the Nazi regime. Over time, other groups were also interned at Dachau, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Roma (Gypsies), gay men, as well as "asocials" and repeat criminal offenders.  During the early years relatively few Jews were interned in Dachau.
   

Roll-call square where the prisoners would stand for hours.
   

An ominous drawing of the notorious Roll Call at Dachau.

"Roll call is daily torture.  One day the books will play up the more gruesome aspects of Auschwitz: the medical experiments on women and childen [and men at Dachau], the mutilating tortures of the Gestapo, the casual sadistic murders of slave workers, and of course the covert asphyxiation of millions of Jews.  All these things happen, but most working prisoners do not encounter them.  Roll call is as bad as anything they endure.  They stand motionless in ranks morning and evening for a couple of hours in all weathers.  The hardest work is preferable.  At least you warm yourself when you're in the swing, and distract your mind.  At roll call hunger gnaws, bowels and bladder agonize, cold eats into the bones, and time stops.  Roll call is when Musselmen [exhausted prisoners] tend to keel over.  By the time roll call ends on a bitter winter morning, bodies litter the ground."  -- Herman Wouk, War And Remembrance.
   

Looking from the Maintenance Building across the vast Roll Call square to the first row of prisoner barracks.
   
The barracks on the right was open for tour.
   
The bunks where men would be crammed in.  I was surprised to learn that the prisoners were required to keep the barracks spotlessly clean.  Cleaning could only be done after an exhausting work day followed by a two hour roll call.  More than anything else, this showed me how fervently the Nazis tormented the prisoners.
   
 
An aerial view of the barracks after liberation.  The camp area consisted of 32 barracks, including one for clergy imprisoned for opposing the Nazi regime and one reserved for medical experiments.
 
 
   
The only two barracks are replicas.  Rectangular gravel pits now mark where the remaining barracks used to be.
   

Dachau prisoners were used as forced laborers. At first, they were employed in the operation of the camp, in various construction projects, and in small handicraft industries established in the camp. Prisoners built roads, worked in gravel pits, and drained marshes.  During the war, forced labor using concentration camp prisoners became increasingly important to German armaments production.
   
The wide promenade.  Almost looks pleasant.
   
An electrified barbed-wire fence, a ditch, and a wall with seven guard towers surrounded the main compound.
   
Diagram showing the layout of the perimeter fence.
   
In 1942, the crematorium area was constructed next to the main camp. It included the old crematorium and the new crematorium (Barrack X) with a gas chamber. There is no credible evidence that the gas chamber in Barrack X was used to murder human beings.
   
The gas chamber
   
Generally, the SS utilized the crematoria to immolate the bodies of inmates who died in the camp. They also hanged or shot inmates involved in resistance activity there (the whole area was separated from the prisoners’ barracks by a wall). Despite all the labor and resources expended, the SS never implemented the mass gassing of human beings at Dachau.
   

The number of prisoners incarcerated in Dachau between 1933 and 1945 exceeded 200,000. It is difficult to estimate the number of prisoners who died at Dachau. The thousands brought to the camp for execution were not registered before their deaths. Furthermore, the number of deaths that occurred during evacuation have not been assessed. Scholars believe that at least 40,000 prisoners died at Dachau.

One placard in the museum/documentation center said you had to be young, and you had to have friends, to have a chance of surviving Dachau.  Otherwise, you had no chance.
   
Dachau was liberated by the 7th Armored Division of the U.S. 7th Army on April 29, 1945.
   

Dachau was crowded, with what looked like high-school students.  It's a frequent field-trip destination.
 
   
 
   
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