WOW. While typing those 3 letters I teared up again.
Outside the setup is pretty simple and creepy at the same time. The guard building with the memorial in the front is the old guard building that is converted to a museum. The rest of the grounds are two rows of spaces where the old housing sat, they were all torn down and the first one was recreated as a model of what the living conditions were like.
Inside of the house, you saw the living conditions and how they changed from the early 30's until the camp was liberated in '45. Since it was cold outside, it made it a little easier to imagine the conditions of living in something like that. The last of the three pictures shows how tight the beds were, and that they placed people head to toe with very little room.
Slightly outside of the property were the newly built gas chambers and stoves for burning bodies, it was not believed that massive extinctions happened here, but tests were ran on some prisoners. When the camp was liberated, they found a mountain of bodies stacked outside of these chambers.
The weather matched the mood of visiting this place. It was dreary, cold and rainy, pulling up in the parking lot of this place and seeing the fence w/ the barbed wire fence in the distance, you get a slight chill. There is a guide w/ a tour guide in English that is worth taking and planning around (same fee as the entrance itself). We had a little time to kill before the tour started and we went to watch the 20 minute video.
While waiting for the video to start, I started reading one of the exhibit stands and it, along w/ nearby photos immediately brought me to tears. We still had 4 hours in this place and I knew right then, this would be one of most difficult days of my trip.
Outside the setup is pretty simple and creepy at the same time. The guard building with the memorial in the front is the old guard building that is converted to a museum. The rest of the grounds are two rows of spaces where the old housing sat, they were all torn down and the first one was recreated as a model of what the living conditions were like.
Inside of the house, you saw the living conditions and how they changed from the early 30's until the camp was liberated in '45. Since it was cold outside, it made it a little easier to imagine the conditions of living in something like that. The last of the three pictures shows how tight the beds were, and that they placed people head to toe with very little room.
Slightly outside of the property were the newly built gas chambers and stoves for burning bodies, it was not believed that massive extinctions happened here, but tests were ran on some prisoners. When the camp was liberated, they found a mountain of bodies stacked outside of these chambers.
Dachau started as a political prisoner camp in early 30's and evolved into a model for the German concentration camp. Theoretically, this place was not built to kill off and destroy Jews (like Auschwitz) and the gas chamber on site never went into production. I wont go into details of the history, the museum or any of the other stuff, Ill just put out there my thoughts.
- I was largely unaware that the German cruelty and the concentration camp was an evolution of 10-15 years (first deaths of Jews in camps were actually investigated and prosecuted). This evolution kind of shines a weird light on the human being, that while not capable of something like this immediately, these SS guards, etc came around to this evil over time
- The death march at the end of the war ~1945 was a way to cover up the war crimes and hide this atrocity. Imagine doing something so horrible, where you have to hide a million or so prisoners from a large geographical area and another million or so bodies that you did not have a chance to burn. Wow.
- How is this any different from anything else in our history? I just finished touring Rome (where they brought in millions of slaves to build shit and brutally killed millions more) and the rest of Europe, which is pretty much nothing but wars and murder. Here is what I think there are human video testimonials of the survivors, there is photography, so you can see. The second is, I imagine the best in humanity, that if you are killing or slaving people, you still treat them with some respect (food, shelter, warmth), not this bad. Third is maybe because Im Jewish and Russian and this is closer to home. At the end I dont know, but this is sick stuff.
- The part of the exhibit that made me really cry was the description of the "liberation", how the US soldiers came into that camp, what the prisoners felt and experienced. The fact that some of the troops were so appalled by what they found, they shot some SS guards on the spot. The fact that some of the prisoners took their anger out on some of the guards. Powerful.
- Seeing this, makes me think that a version of this in smaller bits is going on all over the world today. You have to wonder, who is supposed to stop it? Is it Americas job? Is it the people? I dont know, but it seems we should be above this nonsense in 2014. I think the ability to photograph and video these atrocities and mass spread them is going to change humanity for the better.
- Touring the facilities, watching exhibits, etc as an engineer made me appreciate the German ingenuity and intelligence, the things we marvel in their cars, etc was used to create a mass extermination facility, gas chambers, etc. There is something really awful about that. Its like watching a genius at work, but that genius is creating mass murder.
All in all, this is the probably the sickest place I have ever been to (other then WTC 30 days after 9-11), this is on such a larger scale. It is a must see if in Germany.
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