The Dachau Concentration Camp

 October 16^th, 2023

I checked out of Wombat’s hostel and hopped on the train to the airport where I picked up the car that I had rented for the next 5 days.  My plan was to head a few hours south of Munich to visit a few of my paragliding suppliers, which was the main reason I came to Germany for a week.  I have been running a paragliding school for 9 years now and it would be nice to put some faces to names that I have been dealing with over email for such a long time.

 

I decided to revisit the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial/Museum which is west of the city.  I went there back in 1995 when I was backpacking through Europe after university.  I was curious to see how much I remembered and if things had changed at all.  It also has a whole lot more meaning to me personally now as I have made some Israeli friends over the past 13 years and dated an Israeli woman, Naomi, on and off for a number of years.  We met while I was stuck in India and continue to be in touch today.  Israel has just been attacked by Hamas out of Gaza about 9 days ago so the persecution and troubles for her people unfortunately continues to this day.

 

Before entering the main gate, I noticed a guided tour group near a sign so I wandered over to see what the sign was about.  It was pointing out an SS officer building that resides outside of the walls of the camp.  The guide was a German fellow in his late 50s and he seemed quite passionate about what he was explaining.  I decided to loiter there, not knowing if this was a tour you had to sign up for or whether you could just join in.  Well, I just joined in. 

 

We walked over to the main gate, which was something that I definitely remembered from 1995.  The iron gate had the words “Arbeit Macht Frei” – Work Makes you Free…yeah right.  The interesting thing with the gate was that this was not the original one that I had seen 28 years ago.  The guide explained that someone stole the gate in 2014 and it was later found in a scrapyard in Norway!  They have returned the gate and it is now housed in the main building, behind a glass case.  The perpetrators were never found.

The entrance to the camp:

The main gate:

Dachau was the very first concentration camp and was built in 1933, six years before WWII began.  It was initially used for political prisoners but soon Jews and other supposed lesser races.  It became the model for future concentration camps that sprung up around Germany, Austria and Poland.  It was originally meant to house 6000 prisoners but this number ballooned to over 12,000 by the end of the war.

The main building:

A replica of the original barracks:

The main thoroughfare, there would have been about 9-10 barracks on either side of the trees.

A guard tower:

Needless to say, the living and working conditions were appalling.  It’s hard to fathom how a place like this can exist and how one group of humans can inflict such relentless, calculated and evil treatment on others.  There were at least 32,000 documented deaths at the camp…and who knows how many more.

About 50 people would sleep in these bunks.

And those 50 had to share these two sinks...

And these toilets.

One form of punishment was caning.  The prisoner had to count out loud in German with the punisher, and if they cried out or said the number incorrectly, they would start again.

The original gate:

Our guide was very knowledgeable about the place and the past.  He was not just a mere tour guide, he continues to do research and try to locate and interview survivors. He mentioned that during Covid, when the place was closed to the public, they were able to concentrate (probably the wrong word to use) on filling in some blanks as to some of the past history.

The fake showers, that was in fact the deadly gas chamber.

The Zylon gas would come in from the vents below.

The original crematorium building.

The perimeter fence.

We finished the tour with the gut-wrenching visit to the crematorium.  Dachau was not an extermination camp like places such as Auschwitz, but still thousands died, sometimes faster than they could bury the corpses so a crematorium aided in the disposal of bodies.   After everyone had passed through the crematorium, or at least everyone who wanted to, the tour guide talked about his youth and how his father, who was a member of the Wehrmacht, couldn’t or perhaps just wouldn’t talk about his role in the war (he was not at Dachau).  This caused a rift between the guide and his father.  He also mentioned that it is mandatory for teenagers in the area to come and visit Dachau as part of a school trip…in the hopes that this kind of evil and barbaric scenario never happens again.

It was a sobering and sad afternoon but one that I’m glad I did.  It’s the least that one can do to honour those who suffered dearly and to those who paid the ultimate sacrifice.