Dachau Survivors Memorial - Dec 22, 2015

Memorial to the Victims

Sorry to be so slow in getting this out, but we were really tired the first day here, and slept much of the afternoon. The flight was pretty good, but it is long. We arrived in Frankfurt a bit early and then had to make the loooong walk to the gate for our flight to Munich. It was quite a ways away, and we were pretty tired of walking at that point (it was about 8:30 am here, but really about 11:30 pm in Kamloops - far past our bedtime).

On Dec. 22 (Tuesday) we signed up for a trip to and tour of Dachau, the first concentration camp in Germany, built before WW II. We had to leave our hotel and take the subway (which is right below our hotel) to Central Station (Hauptbahnhof in German). That was an adventure in itself, but only 5 stops from our hotel station (Rosenheimer Platz). It is a real disadvantage, not being able to read the language, but people were very helpful, showing us how to use the ticket machines and directing us where to go.

Nicola, our Tour Guide

There is a large entrance building where those entering would pay their fee (ours was part of the tour package). Nicola then talked to us about what to expect and then began the tour. First we looked at the area where the SS was trained. They were the elite bodyguards for Hitler, but also the ones who ran the camp after the first couple years. Their training taught them how to exact the most pain to the inmates while keeping them alive to work for Germany as slave labour.

The camp was first established to get rid of German far left wing thinkers and dissidents against the country. It was originally a concentration camp to change the "way of thinking" of those people and run by the German police. However, too many folks died in the first few years (which was known because the law said that all deaths had to be recorded in the city of Dachau). So, the SS took over and the German police were replaced by them.

They were able to doctor records and took over the issuing of death certificates so that Dachau was not aware of what was actually happening in the camp. Initially, there were about 2000 - 3000 inmates, but as the 2nd World War got going and German occupation of surrounding countries began, the population of the camp increased a lot over the next years.

Entrance Gate to Prison From Inside

The Dachau Concentration Camp was the model and teaching ground for all the concentration/extermination camps that were built by the Third Reich. Al of the atrocities that were committed in the various camps originated at Dachau. All of them happened at some level here.

The memorial is built on the actual site of the Concentration Camp. The entrance to the camp is the original gate where the victims entered. The initial processing building is no longer there, but there are some marking showing where they victims were first processed. They then entered the camp, which was in full view of the SS Officers' home barracks, about 50m away.

The building where they were taken next was to the right. Here they were forced to strip off their clothes, get their hair shaved off their bodies, go through the delousing baths or showers, get their numbers assigned, and were issued their prison uniforms. Nicola explained this process in graphic detail, and the whole purpose was to dehumanize and humiliate the victims. They were no longer known by their names, but only by their numbers and the symbols on their uniforms.

A lot of the corporal punishment was carried out in this building, which echoed quite a bit. The windows opened toward the roll-call square where the inmates often stood for hours, listening to the screams of those being tortured.

Behind this building was another long building, full of individual cells. Nicola described some of the things that went on here. Some of the original tortures are no longer there, but she spoke of the standing cells. These were cells where some of the inmates spent their nights, not able to do anything other than stand. She said that some of these would work for 12 hours during the day, spend the next 12 hours in the standing cell, and then work 12 hours the next day.

Prisoner Barracks Across the Roll-Call Square

She also talked about how the SS would harass these prisoners overnight. Often having the radiators turned up high during the hot summers, and almost no heat during the winters. They terrorized these prisoners during the night, often noisily walking down the hallways and taking a prisoner away for torture. All the prisoners could hear them coming, and we could imagine the feat that tonigh they were to be taken away, each time they heard them marching down the hallway.

Latest Bunks

Across the roll-call square, were the prison barracks. There is only one row of the barracks now, and it is not original. They had deteriorated badly by the time the memorial was created, so this one had been re-built to show what life was like. We went in the first room, which showed the bunks for the prisoners originally. The bunks were three high, one per inmate, built with separations between the bunks for the bedding and mattresses of the inmates. Over the years as more and more prisoners were brought in, the bunks became less individual and able to accommodate more than one prisoner by removing the separations and finally making each level one large bunk to accommodate as many as possible. The prison was originally built to house 6000, but when the US Army liberated it, there were over 30000 being kept there.

Behind this rebuilt barracks are the footprints of the rest of the barracks that were there. In all, there were 34 barracks to house the prisoners.

Crematorium

Unknown Prisoner

Then, there were the crematoriums built to get rid of the bodies of those who died, and later to hide the evidence of what had happened there. What an awful place. The prisoners were brought in at one end, walked through a de-lousing station, and then told they were going into a shower. Once large groups were locked in, the gas was produced and in about 15 minutes, all of them were killed. From there, the bodies were brought out and put into the crematoriums to be disposed of.


This was certainly not a tour to be taken lightly. It was informative and helped me to get a much better understanding of the atrocities the Nazis committed during the war. It is certainly something that humanity cannot afford to forget, and therefore, this is a tour that everyone should attend.