Thousands of people filed through these gates, past this phrase.
Roughly translated - work makes you free.
Dachau was the first concentration camp, opened in 1933. It first housed "political" prisoners. It was the camp that clergy was sent to.
12 years.
206,206 prisoners.
31,951 deaths.
When liberated by the Allies, there were 63,000 prisoners and a typhus epidemic. The death rate was 200 people per day.
Unlike Auschwitz, there is no record of mass murder within the camp. Outside the camp at firing ranges, an estimated 4,000 Soviet prisoners of war were executed - some used for target practice.
The administration building.
Reconstructed barracks.
View from the barracks.
I had no idea how big this camp was. If you click on the photo, you can see that the concentration camp (outlined in red) - as large as it is - is just a small portion of what was an SS camp (outlined in green).
How can one fully comprehend man's inhumanity towards man? I would like to say something profound, but all I can do is try as best I can to explain my feelings about the visit.
When walking through the grounds, it felt as though one were at a funeral - people are quiet, speaking in hushed voices. Every now and then, though, one hears laughter or sees people lounging and chatting on the grass under trees. My first reaction was to wonder why these visitors don't have more respect for where they are. But then I realized these were actions which, during those 12 years, would have been punished.
I realized that rather than frowning at these visitors, a better tribute to those who were tortured, who died, who survived is for me to work for equality and justice. To do my part to make this a world in which hatred, oppression, torture, genocide, mass murder, and other ghastly terms are just words and not reality.
I recently saw a wonderful documentary about what happened to middle school students in Whitwell, TN when they began studying the Holocaust.
To watch it for free online, go here.
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