I spent a meaningful afternoon at Dachau Concentration Camp, just north of Munich. I encourage anyone visiting Germany to make the effort to see the camp. Originally, it was a munitions camp that was not permitted to operate after WWI. It was converted to a large camp to house 7000. It eventually became one of the 36 labor camps in the German system during the 1930s and 1940s. By Liberation Day, there were 40,000 prisoners living in Dachau! The first prisoners were those who objected to the Nazi party’s elimination of civil rights for all citizens. Even Germans were imprisoned or executed if they spoke about the camp. My tour guide called the present Dachau, “a total lesson on tolerance and democracy.”
From 1933-1945, there were 33,000 recorded deaths. It is widely accepted that there were many thousands more . Most of Dachau prisoners were Poles, Hungarians and Frenchmen. In 1943, when coal was scarce, and the Germans knew the end of the war was near, they left piles and piles of bodies and bones at the back of the camp. The museum and films show the horrific reality of the camp.
Listening to our guide describe the inhumane living conditions made me understand just what a “terror camp” was. Living conditions changed constantly in Dachau: a 4 AM wake-up routine; a 7PM roll call that could last for hours in all kinds of weather; scraps of food; 12-14 hour work days; “sick parades” to humiliate the dying and deprive people of hope; forced suicides (where guards provided the ropes for hanging); platform beds where 5-6 were forced to sleep together. Someone even was assigned the job of blowing a whistle several times a night to get everyone to turn over in unison. Contributing to the constant terror were constant punishments for the slightest offenses - such as a dirty shoelace or a misaligned blanket.
Sometimes people were dragged from cells at 2AM and shot for no reason. Many prisoners went crazy. Women were forced to do the same work as men and if people were seen praying, they were shot. If 3 people were seen together, they were accused of conspiracy and were also executed. In the 1940's some barracks housed 2000 prisoners.
The crematorium is near the back of the camp. The room layout resembles an assembly line and sent chills down my spine. Pure anguish could be seen in many of the visitor’s faces as we walked the same steps prisoners must have taken. The crematorium was built because it was more efficient to kill and cremate the dead in Dachau than to transport or bury the dead. Hooks still hang in the ceiling where bodies were hung before cremation.
The memorial sculpture in the center of camp, and the duplicate which was erected in Israel, truly signifies the horror prisoners must have felt living in and behind the inescapable barbed wire and concrete walls. Many actually chose to be electrocuted as their way to escape hell. The camp today may be a very “sterile version” of the real camp, but it still conveys chilling lessons about the atrocities of a police state.
