12/8/13 Dachau Concentration Camp

Visiting this place was an experience that cannot be put into words...I am not even going to try. 

I will just give you some of the details we learnt today.

This building is the SS offices & the main camp gate. The road was used to connect the camp with the SS training grounds. The site covers over 2 & 1/2 square miles & is just outside the township of Dachau.

Dachau was the first Concentration Camp built by the Third Reich & was the model for all other camps.

It was built in 1933 & it's original use was the incarceration of political  prisoners & anyone that was deemed to pose a threat to the control & ruling of the new regime. The Concentration Camp was used as a hard labour camp to break the will of the inmates. The sign on the gate reads 'Work Sets One Free', a joke by the SS as their aim was to work the prisoners to death, literally.

The prisoners were herded in through the main gates & then into the maintenance building, where all their belongings were confiscated. They were stripped naked & then their paperwork was filled out in a state of undress to try & further degrade & humiliate them. They were given 1 shirt & 1 pair of pants to last their entire stay. During this time they were regularly sworn at, threatened and beaten.

The inmates were subjected to a brutal & degrading admittance procedure & were further segregated by coloured patches they had to sew to their shirts. At a glance, the SS officers could tell your religion, political leanings & the crime for which you were incarcerated. The Maintenance building was built by the prisoners in 1937 & contained the kitchen, clothing supply room, baths, laundry & workshop. On the roof of the building a text was painted in large letters 'There is a path to Freedom. It's milestones are: Obedience, Honesty, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Hard Work, Discipline, Sacrifice, Truthfulness, Love of thy Fatherland'.

No prisoner could know if he would ever leave the Concentration Camp again.

On the left is the maintenance building & on the right is the Bunker which served as the camp prison for 'special' prisoners...clergy, officials & military POW's. At the end of these buildings is a high wall that the SS used as a firing range. Between 1941 & 1942 at least 4,000 Soviet prisoners of war were shot 'legally' because Russia had not signed the Geneva Convention.

This is a boot scrapper outside the SS officers administration rooms. I don't know if anyone else knew what they were, but my Dad had some made to use at his Property.

A typical Bunker cell for the 'special' prisoners. This is also the building that they carried out interrogations & special tortures to the prisoners.

The Standing Cell - I was unable to lie down @ I couldn't crouch, it was best just to stand up, standing for 6 days & 6 nights...a small 2.8 metre high chamber, in the ceiling a small window, & that was it. Your elbows touch both sides of the walls, your back is up against the wall behind you & your knees pressed against the wall in front of you. A little door led inside, bolted from the outside with 4 iron bars. It is not a punishment or detention, that is torture, straightforward medieval torture.

Knoll Conditioning - the floor is polished, we weren't allowed to enter the room without our shoes. Knoll suddenly shouted: Let's go, punishment drill in the yard! And the room staff began beating us with clubs...& we had to run fast...& so we ran out barefoot & got totally dirty. And then we came back & naturally made everything dirty. Lick it up! And so we used our tongues to lick off the filth. And they beat us & a few people were beaten to death. That was Knoll Conditioning. (Knoll was one of the Captains).

This is one of the barracks that housed the general population of prisoners. Originally it had 200 beds in each barrack & housed a similar number of prisoners. This camp was used to manufacture munitions when Germany went to war, but with the need for more munitions their need for labour increased & so more 'prisoners' were rounded up including anyone of Jewish or Gypsy decent.

This meant that the barrack population swelled from 200 to 2,000 and there were only 2 wash stations for this number of men. In total there were 30 barracks in this section of the complex.

There were only 40 toilets to service their needs.

This is the bed set up for 200 men.

When the numbers reached 2,000 the beds consisted of long sections of timbered planking that could sleep a very crowded 800, which meant that not everyone got to lay down & sleep...so a rotation system was used. 

A photo of the 200 bunk system.

A photo of the 800 person bedding.

 

This is the Roll-call area where everyone, including the sick & wounded had to report to answer their name call at 6.30am & 6pm every single day of the year.

One of the SS photo's of roll-call.

The view from barrack number 1 across the Roll-call area to the maintenance building.

This is Camp Road & there were 15 barracks on either side behind the Poplar trees. The buildings were demolished in 1963 by the Bavarian Government when they were deemed to be unsafe. The prisoners were heavily guarded both day & night, but the SS guards left the Camp grounds at night & the prisoners could wander & interact in this road. It was also known as The Spirit of the Camp Road because it was a central meeting place where the prisoners, during the few free hours could meet friends from other barracks, exchange information & one ingenious inmate made a radio that he could listen in to the Allies broadcasts & then relay the information to the men. This was a boost to moral for the men & kept them abreast of the war effort. It was also a great symbol of solidarity & gave them hope.

An aerial shot of the Camp during its early operation.

Someone's small memorial to barrack 20.

Looking back over the demolished barracks towards the reconstructed barracks number 1 & 2.

This is the security installations with a guard tower, the ditch, the hill with barbed wire & the 4 strand electrified fence also with barbed wire. The grassed area on the left (where Nick is standing) was a no-go zone & anyone who disobeyed was immediately shot.

A view from the free side of the fenced compound.

This is the Crematorium used from 1933 to 1943. It consists of 1 oven & was responsible for cremating over 11,000 prisoners who met their untimely death through starvation, beatings, over work, illness, medical experimentations or execution.

The oven.

In 1942 they built this Crematorium (barrack X) to cope with the dramatic increase in bodies & to be used as a killing facility. It operated during 1943 to 1945 & has 4 ovens. It is not known how many people were cremated here, but conservative figures put it at 50,000.

The 4 ovens. The open rafter beams were used as hanging poles for prisoner executions & for ease of disposal of the bodies.

When the Allies liberated the Camp, the ovens had not been used because of a coal shortage & they found over 3,000 bodies stacked in the storage rooms. They also found an open grave with over 7,600 rotting corpses.

The 5 fumigation cubicles.

The Gas Chamber was not used for mass murder, but they did murder individual prisoners & small groups using poison gas. The sign outside says 'Shower Room'...notice the shower points in the roof which was supposed to fool the intended victims.

The 2 access flues that were used to administer the crystallised poison to the gas chamber. When it mixed with warm air it transformed into the gas that would kill the occupants.

The Crematorium is surrounded by beautiful trees & landscaping. This tranquil arbour leads in a semi-circle & when you reach the middle...

 You find the Execution Wall with a blood ditch dug into the ground.

This is the horror that the Allies faced when they finally liberated the Camp.

The Allies brought citizens from the local village to show them what the Nazi's were doing right in their own back yard.

Although final numbers will never be known, between the Concentration Camps & the Extermination Camps run by the Nazi's, millions of people suffered & died under the most horrendous circumstances & many more were displaced & in some way affected for life.

On the 28th April 1945 during the Allies battle to liberate the camp, the prisoners attempted an uprising, but were unsuccessful.

The Allies liberated the Dachau Concentration Camp on the 29th April 1945. During the fighting the prisoners killed a number of SS soldiers & informers in the Camp. They also beat to death all of the guard dogs that had been used against them during their incarceration.  2,400 SS troops were arrested & held prisoner in the barracks they had previously been guarding & 200 of them were given the death penalty.