10/8/11 Dachau

So on the way to Dachau (the concentration camp memorial) you drive through the village of Dachau, and it looks like a nice little place. Even arriving at the memorial site parking, it looks like so many other parking areas in Germany. Then you start taking a walk toward the memorial site. On the walk you have to cross a street that is a neighborhood street. Can you imagine living right next to Dachau? Sure, in the light of concentration camps it may not have the notoriety of others, but it has its own horrific history. What is really odd is when you think about it, according to what people living in Dachau (the village) had said after the camp was liberated, they had no idea what was going on there...could the fences been so good that it was true. I can't believe that it was, but then again, even though nothing is happening at Dachau (the concentration camp memorial site) I don't think I would want to live next to it. Sure maybe if I were a parapsychologist and trying to find a ghost story, but other than that, no.

Now I will be honest, and I don't think it is a matter of being desensitized by years of researching the holocaust, but Dachau did not affect me as much as the time that I spent at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Perhaps it is because going to Dachau was in the light of day (admittedly rather dreary at first since it had started raining again, but by the time we got to the gates it had cleared up). The time that I spent at the USHMM was often with only those of us who were at the workshop walking around. It was eerily quite with less than 50 people in the building and it is so dark in the building...it's hard to explain. But that being said, Dachau does have its own affect on people, but they have attempted to minimize the "slap in the face" affect and to me, they have minimized to a point that almost makes it somewhat sterile. It is well worth the trip though.

So this is what I got of the short amount of time we spent there. Unfortunately, the short amount of time was shortened even more with our going in to watch a video on the camp...which unfortunately was in German, as they changed the time for the English showing. But here goes...a little history, a little present day...

A few weeks after Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor, a concentration camp for political prisoners was set up in Dachau on March 22, 1933. This camp served as a model for all later concentration camps and as a school of violence for the SS men under whose command it stool. In the twelve years of its existence over 200,000 people from all over Europe were imprisoned there and in the subsidiary camps. More than 43,000 of them died. Dachau was liberated on April 29, 1945.

This is a section of the original fence and one of the guard towers behind it...next to the guard house are some modern houses...I don't think I would want to live there.

What is left of the railroad lines and platform .

"Work sets you free"

The International Memorial

The Catholic Mortal Agony of Christ Chapel

location of former barracks

A pretty little creek, until you look a little closer (on the left side is the remnants of the barbed wire)

The waiting room.

Shower room

 

"Here in Dachau on the 12th of September 1944 four young Woman Officers of the British Forces attached to Special Operations Executive were brutally murdered and their bodies cremated. They died as gallantly as they had served the Resistance in France during the common struggle for freedom from tyranny."

Background wall for pistol range for execution.

Russian Orthodox  Chapel

Protestant Church of Reconciliation

the Carmelite Holy Blood Convent is located on the other side of the  guard tower.

Jewish Memorial

The Camp Road today

The Camp Road when the camp was open.

Again showing the positioning of old and new...on the left an exit from the bunker (when many atrocities occurred) and the newer housing within sight.

Whipping block; prisoners were given 25 lashes for such minor offenses as having a button mission from their uniform or putting their hands in their pockets.