29TH OF APRIL 1945

 

Dachau Concentration Camp came extremely overcrowded during its last months. In the end of 1944 there were over 63.000 prisoners in Dachau and its sub-camps and typhus epidemic break out killing many prisoners. Thousands of others were dying from malnutrition, exhaustion or in death marches organized by Nazis. Those ones who survived until April 29th 1945 saw the liberation – 42nd and 45th Infantry Divisions and 20th Armored Division of U.S. Army liberated approximate 32.000 prisoners from Dachau during that day. As U.S. Army approach didn’t come as a surprise, many of the Nazi commanders were able to escape from the camp. While ‘big boys’ were escaping, many of those who were left guarding the prisoners when U.S. army arrived, were executed even though they surrendered.

There were total 34 barracks in Dachau – all extremely overcrowded during the last months before the liberation

Today, exatly 70 years after that day, the phrases written in the monuments of Memorial Site of Dachau are in my mind.

Never Again.

Do not forget.

It’s difficult to understand why and how all that happened. If we would, it would be easier to prevent history repeating itself. However unfortunately when looking a world around us today, it’s not too difficult to imagine that something like this could happen again someday. Humans don’t learn from their mistakes. But it’s good that places like Dachau Memorial Site are existing still today. That way we and future generations can at least try to understand. And at least we don’t forget...

BUNKER AND BARRACK X

“Four month in the Bunker, four months detention in darkness, four months with hot food every fourth day! Time crawls by. I only count every fourth day, and I am amazed when the food comes and wakes me up. I am in a state of trance.” –Ervin Gostner, July 1938
 
There were 3 detention buildings originally in Dachau, but only one of them still exists today in Dachau Memorial Site. The place is called bunker. The bunker was the place for punishment, torturing and interrogation. But that wasn’t the full story - as another side of the coin, it was also used as a cell for VIP prisoners.

The most shocking place in Dachau is Barrack X, the crematorium. Barrack X is the new crematorium in the camp. It was built in 1943 when capacity of old crematorium wasn’t big enough anymore to dispose all the corpses of the camp. There was also a gas chamber built to Barrack X, but there isn’t any evidence that it would have been used in large-scale.

Gas chamber was disguised as showers

ENTRANCE TO DACHAU CONCENTRATION CAMP

I started my visit to Dachau Concentration Camp by walking there from Dachau railway station. This walk takes some time, but for me it seemed like the only proper way to start the visit. By trying to follow the same path which so many prisoners have been walking before entering the Dachau Concentration Camp and by trying to imagine what has been going in their mind during that walk. And by trying to think how locals, people living in Dachau, have thought and are thinking today about the camp. They must have been aware of the horrible things happening behind the gates of the camp. How did that feel like? To know that just few hundred meters from your home, people are punished just because they are not like you? People who have not done anything wrong, they are just punished from being born and being different? How many of them have disapproved those actions in their minds? But by shutting their eyes and continuing their life normally they have still silently approved those actions?

Entrance to camp itself is via gate where reads the Nazi motto Arbeit Macht Frei. In early years of Dachau Concentration Camp the things were different. Unlike in later established concentration camps, entering to camp through these gates didn’t mean that you are never exiting the camp. In early years this was really a prison - prisoners were exiting the camp when it was seen that they have paid their penalty. But things changed also here when the WWII started and less and less prisoners were exiting the camp. Or if they were, they were doing it only because they were transferred to work into one of the many subcamps of Dachau. 

Arbeit Macht Frei – Work Makes You Free. This text was stolen from the gate of Dachau in November 2014

DACHAU CONCENTRATION CAMP – THE PLACE WHERE IT ALL BEGUN

“Dachau – the significance of this name will never be erased from German history. 

It stands for all concentration camps which the Nazis established in their territory.” 

–Eugen Kogon

Dachau Concentration Camp was one the first few camps which were established soon after Hitler started as Reich Chancellor and National Socialist dictatorship period begun. It was years before the WWII, in 1933. Dachau first served as a place for political prisoners, but later it also became the prison for many minorities such as Jehova’s Witnesses, Sinti, Roma, homosexuals and Jews as well as war prisoners. It was never used as a mass-extermination camp like Auschwitz, but it served as a model for the whole concentration camp network and it was the only concentration camp which was operational during the whole Nazi period. Dachau prisoners were also used as forced laborers: first they were employed in operations of camp and in its construction work, but later they were working also in German industry as well as in its armaments production.

Dachau Concentration Camp was the only concentration camp which was operational during the whole Nazi period from 1933 until 1945

Dachau Concentration Camp was used as a model for many other coming concentration camps established during the WWII