Adventures in Deutschland: Dachau

"The concentration camps, by making death itself anonymous (making it impossible to find out whether a prisoner is dead or alive), robbed death of its meaning as the end of a fulfilled life. In a sense they took away the individual's own death, proving that henceforth nothing belonged to him and he belonged to no one. His death merely set a seal on the fact that he had never existed." ~Hannah Arendt

Sometimes, even in the midst of the greatest of adventures, there comes a time for quietness, reflection, solemnity. Our 20 km trek outside of Munich to the town of Dachau warranted such a time.

I suppose no trip to Germany is complete without a trip to a concentration camp, even if it makes for quite the heavy day. From the train station, we hopped aboard a bus which carried us right into the heart of Dachau and dropped us off at the dirt path that leads up to the camp. We were in a town, y'all. The camp was not in the middle of nowhere. It sat right in the midst of a town with shops and houses and business. A town that had, for 12 long years, functioned normally while treachery went on behind the walls of the camp. So close to its day to day...

The dirt path led us up to the entrance of the camp...the wrought iron gate emblazoned with the infamous words: "Arbeit Macht Frei", the lie that tried to convince prisoners that "work makes you free". Thousands of them never experienced freedom again.

We pushed through the gate and walked into the main open yard---the "roll call" ground---where prisoners were made to stand twice daily, sometimes for hours, in extreme conditions to be counted.

We entered a building to our right that had served as the "check-in" for new prisoners. The place where clothes and personal belongings had once been taken now houses the Dachau museum.

  "No smoking!"

   A prisoner's information

    This room (and several rooms to follow) outlined Hitler's and the Nazi's rise to power, the institution of the Dachau concentration camp (in 1933), and the 12 years of tyranny that followed.

  Looking out from the museum, across the roll call ground to where the barracks once stood.

       Chess set carved by a prisoner

We made our way through several rooms, looked at many artifacts, and read hundreds of facts about the concentration camp--the various prisoners that lived (and died) there, the treacherous punishments carried out by the SS, the epidemics that ripped through Dachau, and finally the day the camp was liberated (April 29, 1945). *The next picture may be difficult for some to see.

Deceased prisoners the Allies came across on liberation day

    Memorial to the prisoners of Dachau

With the weight of a dark history heavy upon us, we were more than happy to exit the museum into the bright hot warm sunshine. But our breath of fresh air was short lived as we made our way into the former camp prison...

And this place gave me the eeriest feeling ever. Rows of cells with tiny, bar-covered windows lined the paint-peeled cement hall. Most of the cells in the building had been used for solitary confinement. The long hallway was dark, dank, and deathly quiet. Quiet...except for the tap of my hiking boots echoing off the floor and ceiling. I shivered with each step, as I imagined that the noise was reminiscent of the fear-inducing sound of SS boots walking the same hall, some 70 years ago. 

Back out onto the sunlit grounds of the camp...

    Watchtower

             International Memorial

   Urn with the ashes of unknown prisoners (left side of the previous photo)

               Center of the memorial

          Standing on the roll call ground

         Two rows of security fences around the camp

 Barbed wire

From the outer gate, we made our way to the two buildings which are reconstructed replicas of the original camp barracks. 

          Empty slabs where the barracks once stood

      Wooden slat "beds" where hundreds of prisoners once crammed together

Outside the barracks, we wandered slowly down the long, lonely camp road that had led prisoners from the barracks to the roll call ground. 

            

   Hubs snagged a shot of me capturing one of several of the below shot...

       All in the name of photographical memories, my friends.

The camp road--opposite direction from the roll call ground--led us to a few memorials...

   

   The Mortal Agony of Christ Chapel

          Ceiling inside the chapel

          Inside the Jewish Memorial

Then the path took a left through some trees...a peaceful walk, a light breeze dancing through the leaves, the sun shining gently between branches...but it opened up to this...

     The Crematorium

  Sometimes prisoners were tied up to the wooden beams and beaten. Or lined up and shot while standing there. And thousands of bodies were disposed of right here. By 1944, the crematorium had almost reached its capacity...too many prisoners were dying or being killed. On Liberation Day, the crematorium was found piled with bodies because there was just no room.

The next two photos were also part of the crematorium. The "shower rooms", better known as the gas chambers.

If there was to be any redeeming quality of Dachau, it was that its gas chambers had never actually been used for mass exterminations. But still, so much death had happened right where we stood... 

For 12 long years, people--from every race, religion, and social standing--had been subject to cruel torture and captivity. Forced to work in harsh conditions, subjected to medical experiments, left to die by the hands of the SS or a typhus outbreak. Nearly 200,000 prisoners were registered at Dachau (including its sub-camps), and at least 30,000 (most likely more) died there. 

The thousands of forever altered lives that had once set foot behind its prison walls have been aptly memorialized at Dachau. We exited the camp the same way we entered: through the iron gate at the front. Much like the survivors did, 69 years ago. We all walked through the gate that no prisoner will ever have to walk through again.