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Published: October 24th 2010
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Today, even though I was still tired from yesterday, I went with a group of friends from school to see the first Nazi concentration camp - Dachau Konzentrationslager. Seeing everything was more brutal than I thought. We walked the path that all the new inmates would have walked when they were sent to Dachau. On the gate to the camp was a sign that said “Arbeit Macht Frei”, which means “Work brings freedom.” After crossing the bridge and walking through this gate you were no longer a person, but a number. Out of the 200,000 prisoners sent here, at least 30,000 were killed.
Some of the barracks inside were still intact or renovated and we saw the bunks and toilets and bathrooms of the prisoners. It was a freezing and wet day. Every time I thought about how cold I was, I remembered that the prisoners here had no warm clothes at all. And it’s only October now, I can only imagine how cold it would be in January or February. We walked around the entire camp. We saw the bunkers that were individual prison cells for solitary confinement. Some were standing cells where there wasn’t enough room to
Arbeit Macht Frei
"Work brings freedom" even sit down. We saw the main square where roll call was taken every morning. We saw the grounds where the “infirmary” used to stand. The medicine and care taking of prisoners was neglected. The infirmary was usually used to carry out experiments on prisoners. Usually they would kill the sick prisoners with poison and operate on the prisoners that were healthy. The entire camp was based around fear, cruelty, and work. The prisoners usually got one meal a day, which was breakfast of a thin soup or sometimes a piece of bread. The barracks made for 50 people were filled with over 450 prisoners; disease was common and spread easily. The prisoners were forced to build 32 new barracks to accomodate even more prisoners.
We also saw the barbed wire fence and the four lookout towers on each corner of the camp. The fence was not only electric but also had a barbed wire blockade in front and on top of it.
The worst part was the crematorium where the Nazis burned corpses. They killed so many people that they had to build a second crematory and we walked through it. When we Americans liberated the camp
Jourhaus
the front gate there were piles of corpses, because the Nazis ran out of coal to burn them. The US soldiers forced the citizens of Dachau to come and look at what was being done in their backyard. Many of the citizens were forced to haul the bodies in carts to mass graves.
Prisoners operated the crematory and sometimes prisoners were hanged or executed right in front of the furnace before being thrown in. . When the camp was operational the smell of death reached the city as well. There was also a gas chamber that the Nazis disguised as a shower so that the prisoners would go willingly.
There were a couple different monuments set up by different churches and religions in one section of the camp. An art sculpture was outside the museum (which used to be the command station) that represented the struggle of the prisoners in the camp.
It’s hard to describe exactly how it felt being in such an evil place, but it was awful to say the least. Knowing so many people were tortured and killed exactly where I was standing, for no reason and that nobody did anything to stop it.
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