Dachau: We Shall Remember

This is the gate leading into the Dachau concentration camp. Opened in 1933 it was a "political re-education" camp originally, but it evolved into much more than that. Arbeit Macht Frei was on the gates of virtually every concentration camp. It means "work will make you free." Many of the victims of the camps believed they were being relocated for work. This was one of many things the SS did to maintain the illusion.

This is part of the memorial to the victims inside the camp. Never again is written in Russian, Hebrew, French, and German as well as English.

This picture is part of the memorial and the different color symbols are representative of the different badges worn on prisoner uniforms. The color and symbol system enabled an SS guard to tell at a glance the nationality of the prisoner, the crime they committed, and whether or not they were a repeat offender.

This is another view of the memorial to the victims with the camp administration building in the background.

This is the main entrance to the camp where all the prisoners initially entered to serve their sentence. The camp as stated earlier was a re-education camp so it was possible to get released. Johann Georg Elser the man, who planted the bomb in the Burgerbrau Keller in Munich in 1939 that narrowly missed killing Adolph Hitler, was a former prisoner of the camp. Hitler cut short a speech he was giving and left the hall twenty minutes before the bomb exploded. Elser was later executed here in Dachau. Some historians believe that the bombing attempt was staged by the Nazi's to prove Hitler's Divine providence.

This is the main road that ran between the barracks in Dachau. You can vaguely see the foundations of the barracks buildings. Thousands of prisoners were crammed into these buildings that were really only meant to hold several hundred.

This is the outside of the gas chamber and crematoriums at Dachau. They were not part of the camp initially. They were build later, i believe in the early forties as the camp began to evolve.

This is a picture of the ovens in the crematorium. The sign hanging in the rafter says "Russian prisoners were hung here."

This is a picture inside the gas chamber at Dachau. The sign in the corner says no prisoners were gassed here. We found out in another part of the camp that there was no documented proof that the gas chambers were actually used. part of that may be that they did not become operational until near the end of the war.

This a the locker room in the barracks where prisoners could keep some of their personal items such as a bowl for eating. The camp rules were very stringent and a prisoner could be brutally beaten for an offense as simple as 'a speck of food' in their bowl.

This is the sleeping quarter of the prisoners. They would be stacked in here like "cord" wood with no mattress or blankets. Typhus was a big problem in the camp and many prisoners died of malnutrition, typhus, and other diseases, if they weren't outright executed.

This is a picture of a unique memorial to a group in Munich called "The White Rose." They were an anti-Nazi group at the University of Munich. Hans and Sophie Scholl threw a handful of Anti-Nazi leaflets from a stairwell into the atrium of a building at the university. A maintenance worker who was a Nazi party member saw them throw the leaflets and locked the doors and called the police. Hans and Sophie and other members of the white rose were rounded up and executed. The leaflets in the picture are reproductions of the actual leaflets and are on the ground outside the building where Hans and Sophie originally threw them from the staircase. Here's an interesting link if you want to read more about the The White Rose http://www.jlrweb.com/whiterose/index.html

It was a very moving experience to move around in the camp and think about what happened there. Even though Dachau was not an extermination camp on the scale of camps in other parts of Germany and Poland, you could not help but feel the enormity of what happened there. Many young Germans I talked to had come to terms with this sordid part of their national history, and expressed a desire to not be held accountable for the sins of their fathers. I certainly understood their feelings and in no way passed judgment on them for what happened. Rather I view it as a stark reminder of what can happen when extremism is allowed to take control. It is certainly something to keep in mind when leaders of countries or terror organizations state that they want to wipe a nationality off the map. After visiting Dachau, and reading about the Holocaust, I certainly understand why the state of Israel takes these threats seriously. I also thought the story of the White Rose was interesting, because at times I think we tend to forget that there was opposition to the Nazi movement.

Well, that's my mini tour of Dachau. I hope you find it interesting and I look forward to any comments you may have.