Our primary destination today was the site of the very first concentration camp built by the Nazi’s at Dachau. It is located on the outskirts of Munich and was relatively easy to get to. Dachau is one of the three concentration camps in Germany that is still preserved today, all the others have been destroyed. The tour is set up so that you follow in the footsteps of the prisoners, starting with the site where they disembarked from the railroad cattle cars near the entrance gate. The gate that they passed through to enter the camp is maybe the most powerful part of the entire place. To walk through the iron gate under the words “ARBEIT MACHT FREI” (Work will make you free) is to feel a weight like none other.
The message of what the camp really was becomes clear enough as you gaze around at the double sets of perimeter fences, the guard towers, the barbed wire, and the barracks. There were once 28 prisoner barracks here holding as many as 2000 prisoners each. Today only two barracks buildings have been reconstructed but the concrete foundations of each of the others are still visible.
The other element of the camp, besides being a labor and prisoner camp, was the effort at extermination. A small crematorium was built on site early on and a much larger one was built later, though at this particular site it is believed that the larger building was never actually used for mass killings. No words are needed when looking at these buildings.
So much of this site is heavy on your psyche and the effort to preserve the past in order to remember these events is paramount here. There are several religious memorials here now as well as a memorial dedicated to the phrase “Never Again”. This is history, but it is hard.
Bill and Jeff's Historical Travel Blog 