The Dachau Concetration Camp: Memorials

Reflection was needed during and after our visit to make sense of what we had seen and learned.  As it stands today, the camp is preserved as a lasting reminder of the horrors of the Holocaust and as a memorial to those who lost their lives there.  It exists as a cautionary tale of what could happen if power is left unchecked.  It reminds us of the destructive effects of fear and hatred.  It reminds us to study history to protect our future.  

There are several memorials and places for reflection in the roll call area.  This sculpture, as mentioned in the video from a couple days ago, was created by a Yugoslavian survivor of Dachau.  It depicts prisoners jumping or falling into barbed wire.  Some prisoners resorted to this to escape the terrors of the camp.  This memorial was dedicated in the 1960s.  

 
In the Jewish faith, it's customary for visitors to leave small stones on graves. I read a little bit more about this custom here and here.  This gesture meant a lot to me.

"Think about how we died here."  

Memorials surround the crematorium. The ashes from the crematorium were buried in piles behind the building and in the nearby wooded area.  Memorials mark the ash pits and the execution range.

"Over six million Jews fell victim to the National Socialist (Nazi) reign of violence." 

The Jewish memorial, set behind the prisoners' barracks, is a place for quiet reflection. 
There are also Catholic and Protestant memorials, and a convent with a chapel is also located on site. 

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With everything going on in the world, take a moment and reflect too.  

The Dachau Concentration Camp: The Crematorium

A bridge separates the crematorium area from the rest of the camp.

Although thousands of prisoners died at Dachau (~32,000 were documented), Dachau was not primarily a death camp.  More prisoners died from malnutrition, over-working, and disease than in the gas chamber.  But when walking through the gas chamber and the crematorium area on the same path that unsuspecting prisoners walked, this fact doesn't seem to matter.

 
(*Disclaimer: The video is shaky because I didn't want to show the faces of other visitors.)

We talk about the Holocaust as the systematic killing of people who were deemed a threat by Nazi party officials.  Taking the walk from room to room made this point perfectly clear.  Each room had a purpose.  Each aspect of the building was intentional.  What I experienced was a factory of death, and it's something that I'll always remember.    

1. The waiting room
2. The undressing room
3. The gas chamber
4. The room to stack bodies before cremation 

The wooden beams used for hangings are visible here.  These ovens worked day and night, and as the war progressed, the ovens' capacity could not keep pace with the number of victims.  Corpses were stacked in and outside of the crematorium.  Dead bodies filled boxcars leading into Dachau.  After American troops liberated the camp in April of 1945, they forced German citizens to view the dead.

Sources

If you're interested in seeing photos and videos of the camp during the war and its liberation, you can look here:

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Dachau Memorial Site
Third Reich in Ruins (Dachau then and now)

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My final post will cover the memorials at Dachau.  

The Dachau Concentration Camp: The Main Camp

On the train from Munich to Dachau, the knot in my stomach tightened.  When Ben whispered, "These are probably the same train tracks..." I had been thinking the same thing.  This past Sunday, we were able to visit Dachau and to leave.  Seventy years ago, most riders on the same tracks did not have the choice.

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General Facts

- The first concentration camp was set up in Dachau, Germany shortly after Hitler became the Reich Chancellor in 1933.  Dachau served as the model for all additional camps built, and it was a training site for members of the SS.

- Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, Sinti and Roma (European gypsies), homosexuals, Soviet prisoners-of-war (POWs), priests, political opponents, resistance fighters, and other people deemed as social outcasts were imprisoned at Dachau.  The majority of the prisoners came from Poland. 

- As originally built, Dachau did not have the capacity to house the number of prisoners eventually sent there.  In 1937, prisoners were forced the enlarge the camp themselves.

- As the war progressed, more people were sent to Dachau, and the camp became grossly overcrowded.  In addition to malnourishment, over-working, and the gas chamber, a typhus outbreak contributed to an estimate 32,000 deaths at Dachau during the twelve years the camp was in operation. 

- When the crematorium at Dachau could not keep up, prisoners were sent to Hartheim Castle in Austria for execution. 

- Dachau was liberated by American troops on April 29, 1945.  Some 32,000 people were liberated.

These half-buried train tracks leading to the entrance of the concentration camp (Konzentrationslager, or KZ) were uncovered within the past ten years.  They end as abruptly as they appear.  The SS headquarters for the camp were located in the yellow building on the right side.  Now, the building houses the local riot police.    

Turning around, you see the entrance gate to the camp, which is called the Jourhaus.

The gate that met the prisoners as they entered the camp bears the words, "Arbeit macht frei."
Work makes you free.

Once prisoners entered the camp, they were processed in the maintenance building.  The above collage depicts the Shunt Room, or Schubraum.  The incoming prisoners were separated from soldiers and German-speaking prisoners by the tables in the middle of the room.  On desks like the one pictured on the right, prisoners who could speak German were tasked with writing down the names, birth dates, birth places, personal possessions and other pieces of personal data of each new prisoner.  New arrivals left this room naked and proceeded to the showers.

The "bunker" was used as the camp jail.  SS officers put defiant prisoners in the cells to separate them from influencing other prisoners, and for punishment, torture, or execution.

On the 70 degree day that we went to Dachau, this building felt absolutely freezing.  I could not stay for more than a couple minutes, and I could not imagine it in the winter. 

The foundations of the barracks that housed the prisoners are numbered and run down either side of the tree-lined walkway.  The camp had 34 barracks, and as the war progressed, the camp became more overcrowded.  A watchtower can be seen in the background.  Prisoners were placed in the barracks according to their usefulness; the more useful the prisoners were, the closer they were placed to the roll call area at the center of the camp.  Interesting note: one of the barracks functioned as a brothel.  Female prisoners from a nearby camp were forced to work in the brothel to supposedly help increase the productivity of the prisoners at Dachau.  It seems like there was no end to the degradation of the prisoners. 

More posts are forthcoming. 

This Sunday

 
This trip in two days does not feel real to me yet, but I know that it is a trip I need to take.