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Published: July 10th 2012
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Entrance to Dachau
The doorway to the concentration camp, with the words 'ARBEIT MACHT FREI' - Work makes you free. However the SS idealism of the political prisoners being free was synonymous with dying. *WARNING*
This blog entry contains some disturbing information and photo's about death and torture in the concentration camp dachau. Read at your own risk! Today we went to Dachau. Dachau is about 30 minutes from Munich. It is the site of one of many concentration camps. Dachau was actually the model that many other camps were based upon. This concentration camp opened quite a few years before the second world war, in 1933. Sydony and I went on a tour of the concentration camp, our guide, Marcin, was very knowledgeable. He went into detail not only about actual prison live but also some of the history of Europe prior to the second world war and Hitler’s rise to power.
After the first world war Germany was forced to get rid of most of its army and military might. This led to many people losing their jobs and hyper inflation. In the town of Dachau, they had a large ammunitions factory. Once the military was disbanded the ammunitions factory was no longer needed and shut down. The town went from 100%!e(MISSING)mployment to a 97%!u(MISSING)nemployment rate in 24 hours. When Hitler took power he promised to re-open the ammunitions
Registration Hall
What was once the registration hall and wood and metal work area but is now a museum. factory. Which he did, just not as an ammunition factory.
Hitler was elected but only got 37%!o(MISSING)f the vote. He then went on to plot against the other political parties and gain for himself temporary dictatorship powers and become the ‘Chancellor of the German Nation’.
Dachau has three main stages of its history. From 1933, when it opened until 1937/38 it was used primariy as a political prison. In order to get rid of his political armies he reopened the ammunitions factory in Dachau as an
arbeitslager or work camp. Using about 20%!o(MISSING)f the ground of the ammunitions factory political prisoners were housed in barracks. It had accommodation for 5,000 people and all communists who ‘endanger state security are to be concentrated there’. They used physical and psychological torture to ‘rehabilitate’ the communists. This included making the men march back and forth for hours at a time. Or in groups of eight they would have to take large (hollowed out but still heavy) concrete blocks and build a wall, only to tear it down and build it up 10 meters away. When men died the rest were forced to keep working. During this time while there
Barracks
This is not an original barrack. The original ones were made entirely of wood and just shoved into the mud. By the end of the war they were falling over. The survivors of the camps suggested that they be rebuilt so that others could see what they had been through. These new ones have a concrete foundation although the inside is as it was during the time of the camp. was brutality and horrors there was no or very little overcrowding of the barracks.
The second stage of Dachau was from 1937/38 - 1943, by this time they had demolished the original ammunition factory buildings and replaced them with the neat ordered barracks, registration, metal and wood working buildings, and a torture house. Overcrowding had started and though the new buildings allowed the camp to hold 6,000 men it held over 3 times that many, making disease run rampant.
There were many examples of torture and abuse against the prisoners. In addition to beating and shooting prisoners, they were also forced to endure freezing winters with no heating and windows that were forced continually open followed by summers which would be stifling hot in barracks with closed windows and a heating system turned up high. Another form of punishment was having your wrists tied together, behind your back, and a chain hooked onto the rope binding your wrists then being hung from your wrists. This often broke the wrists and if left for more than 10 minutes would dislocate the shoulders.
Across from the concentration camp, using the other 80% of the land that was originally an
ammunitions factory was the SS training camp. It also housed the gas chamber and crematorium. Dachau’s gas chamber was used mainly to experiment with the gas. Crystalized Zyklon B was used and different conditions were tested to determine the most efficient uses. While many people lost their lives in the gas chamber in Dachau it was mostly in very small groups and not a a mass extermination tool.
It was a very educational, if somewhat horrifying day. We didn’t get back from Dachau until 6pm so we picked up some dinner and made our way back to the hostel. Tomorrow we are going to stick around Munich and perhaps go on a walking tour of the Beer Capital of the World.
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