Dachau Concentration Camp

We took a 20 minute train on Sunday to the Dachau Concentration Camp, which was the first official concentration camp opened in Germany. We arrived early on Sunday morning, a cold gloomy day which well suited the mood seeing this site. It was not only morbid, and depressing, but at points nauseous, as to think that humans were capable of doing something so horrific.

 

Dachau served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi concentration camps that followed. Almost every community in Germany had members taken away to these camps. Over its twelve years as a concentration camp, the Dachau administration recorded the intake of 206,206 prisoners and 31,951 deaths, primarily from disease, malnutrition and suicide. Crematoria were constructed to dispose of the deceased. Together with the much larger Auschwitz, Dachau has come to symbolize the Nazi concentration camps to many people. Dachau lives in public memory as having been the second camp to be liberated by British or American forces. Accordingly, it was one of the first places where these camps were exposed to the rest of the world through firsthand journalist accounts and through newsreels.

The entrance gate to this concentration camp carries the words "Arbeit macht frei", meaning "work liberates".

Built after the camp, were several memorials dedicated to the jews and what they went through.

 This was the main area where the barracks were located. These barracks were 10 by 100m supposed regulated to hold around 200 people. However, they became so overcrowded that they eventually held approximately 2000.

 The most horrific part of the whole site was by far the cremetory. This was where the gas chambers were located. The pictures and descriptions here are pretty self-explanatory.