On December 14, 2007, I toured Dachau's concentration camp. This post is composed of both my journal entry, and numerous notes I took throughout the day. Once again, I apologize if anything seems abrupt, or random in any way. Just realize that I have more notes, and pictures than I would normally know what to do with, and that my goal with such is to educate the rest of you. May we never forget those who were killed in these camps, those who survived, and the ones who got away.
Dachau, December 14, 2007 (journal entry)
Today, I felt the worst feeling of my life thus far, and it'll probably be the worst feeling I'll have ever felt in my entire life. This feeling was felt at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial.
The memorial's at the site of the former camp. I knew it was going to have an effect on me, I just didn't realize the calibre. We met up at Hauptbahnhof for 11:00 this morning. We then took the S2 out to the town of Dachau. Once there, we took a bus out to the site of the former camp.
The town of Dachau is really quite pretty. Honestly, if you didn't know a concentration camp site was there, you wouldn't think that there had been any evil in that town.
Before I go any further, I have to say that this entry is extremely difficult for me to write. However, it will be written because the need for what happened to be known is quite great. It just left such an impact on me that I'm having a hard time writing it all out.
The bus let us off at a small path that led to the gates of the camp, which was about a two minute walk away.
The Jourhaus and the gates are original from back when the camp was first opened. Before we went inside, Allen, our guide, told us that pictures were greatly encouraged, so for those of us who were snap happy, this was very good news.
I took my pictures of the Jourhaus and the gates. So did everybody else.
When we were done taking our pictures, nobody moved. No one wanted to be the first of our group to walk through those gates. Finally, after some hesitation, we went through. The moment I crossed the threshold, shivers shot down my spine, and I became chilled to the bone, even though I was perfectly warm. At some point, my breathing changed too.
I took photographs of everything that was there. I had to. I needed to.
Many parts of the camp are still original, but there are many aspects that had to be rebuilt when the decision was made to turn the camp into a memorial site, as much of the camp was torn down when the war ended.
We went to the barrack first. It had been rebuilt, and featured various stages of sleeping quarters. The rooms were only meant to hold twenty or thirty people. Instead, hundreds were crammed inside.
If it's anything like what the prisoners had to deal with, which I believe it was, it would have been hell on earth. The whole god-damn camp would have been hell on earth.
Next, we were headed for the crematorium. Just before the crematorium, or "Barrack X" as it was known, you'd see an area with grass, a moat, electric fence, and a watch tower.
Stepping on this grass meant that you were out of bounds. If you stepped out of bounds, you were shot. Many prisoners wandered out of bounds because they couldn't handle life in the camp any longer, and quite frankly, I don't know how anyone managed to survive.
Some might have tried to escape. If the prisoners managed to avoid getting shot, they'd go running into the electric fence. If, by some miracle, a prisoner didn't get electrocuted, and made it past the fence, there would be a member of the SS on the other side with a nasty dog waiting for him.
We went over to the crematorium. Actually, there were two. "Barrack X" had to be built because there wasn't enough room for all the corpses in the first one.
We went inside "Barrack X." It housed a gas chamber, but for reasons unknown, it was never put into operation.
"Barrack X" made me shiver. So much death and suffering. As well, prisoners endured pole hangings, where they were strung up with their arms behind their backs, in front of the ovens that were working full steam ahead. Eventually, the camp ran out of coal for the ovens, and when Dachau was liberated, piles of bodies were found unburned outside the dreaded "Barrack X."
We exited the crematorium, and walked down the centre roadway towards the museum.
I started to shake. Not a little. I started to shake uncontrollably, and I couldn't stop. We were walking the exact same path as thousands of innocent prisoners before us. For the entire time that I was at that former camp, I kept on having to remind myself that I didn't just want to be there, but that I needed to be there. I needed to try to better understand all that went on. I still don't fully comprehend, and I never will, because I never experienced what those lost and surviving souls did.
We went inside the museum where we watched a film that was about 25 minutes long. It went into more detail about the camp. When the film finished, we explored the museum. I took pictures of pretty much everything. They had artifacts in glass cases from the camp, whether they be clothes, or torture devices.
They had propaganda posters, and maps of every single concentration camp, and sub-camp...
Dachau, December 17, 2007 (notes from the tour)
The Nazis established the first major concentration camp in Dachau in 1933, 18km from Munich. This was where the Nazis created the, "blueprint for a network," that spread over at least half of Europe.. It resulted in the brutalizing and murdering of millions of innocent people.
"Academy of Terror"
The camp was the originator, role model, and training centre for a system of unparalleled cruelty, which still haunts the imaginations of the civilized world today, and is considered a historic nightmare.
"Arbeit Macht Frei," which is written on the gates of both Dachau and Auschwitz, still remains a cruel and sinister emblem of the past.
Hundreds of thousands of people from 34 different nations walked through Dachau's gates. Tens of thousands of these people perished.
Dachau Camp was liberated in 1945 by the Americans.
In 1965, Dachau, the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany, became the first memorial site in post-war Germany.
Here are a few of the on-site memorials:
And last, here are a few other pieces of interest:
A statue of a defiant prisoner. The prisoners were to keep their heads down at all times, and they were not permitted to associate in groups with more than three people, for the guards thought that such a group would be plotting against them. So for the statue to have a prisoner with his head held high shows his defiance towards the prison guards. The inscription reads, "the dead to be remembered, the living to be reminded."
Death mask.
Where special prisoners were shot.
The prison within. Certain prisoners, who were considered more threatening, were kept inside a separate cell inside the prison building.
Just a few final tidbits of trivia. Dachau only held male prisoners, so if you see any films were there are women and children at this particular camp, I'm sorry, but Hollywood lied. As well, since the gas chambers were never actually put to use, Dachau was never classed as a death camp. Don't you worry, the irony's not lost on me either. One last thing! The question has been raised on occasion of which camp first, the village, or the camp, and the answer is the village, hundreds of years ago. You might be wondering if anyone escaped Dachau camp, and the answer is yes. The prisoner overtook his guard, donned the guard's clothing, and as he was fluent in German, he walked right out the gate. However, I can't for the life of me remember the man's name, but apparently, he left the country, and sent out warnings of what was really going on.
For more about Dachau, visit the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial site:
http://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/index-e.html
I apologize if this post was more disturbing than what you're comfortable with, but I didn't want to leave this experience out. Though remembering our veterans, and the ones who died fighting, is important, we also need to remember those who were held in the camps, both the ones who didn't make it, and the ones who survived.
For more in the series, refer to my other 11 Days of Remembrance posts.
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