Dachau Concentration Camp

In another chapter of Susan Visits Dark History Spots Around the World, we went to visit the Dachau Concentration Camp. My interest in history, specifically Holocaust stories (which was sparked by reading "Number the Stars" in Grade 5) has rubbed off on Tarun, and he was equally engaged in this memorial. I took minimal pictures while there, but those I did take, I will add to this blog.

Dachau was the first permanent concentration camp established by the Nazi regime, opening in March 1933, and it became a model for the concentration camp system that followed. Originally, it primarily housed political prisoners... those who opposed the Nazi regime, including communists and other political opponents, but it soon expanded to imprison many others persecuted by the Nazis (e.g. Jews, Roma, LGBTQ, etc). Over its 12 years of operation, more than 200,000 people were imprisoned at Dachau and its network of subcamps, and at least 41,500 died.

Before you enter the prisoner camp, you can see some of the former SS grounds, which included training facilities, administrative buildings & living quarters. Much of this area isn't part of the memorial today and is currently used by the Bavarian Riot Police.

The site originally had 34 barracks, but today only two have been reconstructed to show what the interiors would have looked like during different periods of the camp's existence. The locations of the others are marked by concrete outlines stretching down the former camp road. 

The expanded camp was designed to hold about 6,000 prisoners, but became incredibly overcrowded as the war progressed. By the time it was liberated by U.S. forces on April 29, 1945, more than 30,000 prisoners were crammed into the main camp. If you need a visual comparison like I did, BMO Field can hold about 30,000 fans during regular Argos/Toronto FC games.

Dachau housed fewer physical artifacts than what I witnessed during my visit to Auschwitz in 2010, but a lot more information. I skimmed a bit because of my finally useful history degree and lost Tarun in the museum area for about an hour. The main museum is housed in the former camp maintenance building, where newly arrived prisoners were registered, stripped of their belongings, forced to undress and processed into the camp system.

One thing that was similar between Auschwitz-Birkenau and Dachau was the gate bearing the words "Arbeit macht frei", or "Work sets you free." A taunting message of false hope to the people imprisoned there. The historic gate was stolen from the memorial in 2014 and eventually recovered in Norway in 2016. Since then, it has been kept inside the museum for security, while a replica stands at the original entrance.

While Dachau was not primarily an extermination camp, it did have a crematorium and gas chamber on site. The gas chamber, disguised as a shower room, was built inside the newer crematorium known as Barrack X.  Historians generally agree that there is no evidence the gas chamber was used for mass executions (unlike Auschwitz-Birkenau), but some prisoners may have been killed there using poison gas.

The crematoria, on the other hand, were extensively used. As the death toll increased, particularly near the end of the war, the crematorium could not keep up. A shortage of coal eventually stopped it from operating, and thousands of bodies instead had to be buried in mass graves. 😥

We spent about three hours there. It's only about 40 minutes from Munich and is quite a solemn, but important, visit. One I won't quickly forget.