Seeing the Sights: Dachau for the Holidays

As strange as it sounds, I did break up visits to Christmas Markets around southern Germany with a sobering visit to Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp. I've been to Munich a few times, and hadn't comprehended how close the Dachau camp is to central Munich. Very easily reachable on the S-Bahn, free, and an odd piece of open space in a packed city. Obviously, the space was set aside for historical education purposes, and was the first camp to be set up as a museum (opened in 1965 and with much consultation from survivors). And in a new segment I'm adding to the blog, it's a 10/10 on the introvert's travel scale. I spent the day there and talked to no one. You don't need an entry ticket, signage provides all the info, and while not everything's in English, most is.

Since it was December, there was intermittent snow, and with each flurry, I thought about the person/movie/poem/wherever that talked about how, when crematoria first went into use in these type of camps, the residents thought it was snowing as the ash fluttered out of chimneys, and were horrified when the realization hit them.

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A short walk from the bus stop, past the visitor center I briefly walked through on my way out, is the guard house with the "Arbeit Macht Frei" gate. This one is a recreation, since the original was stolen, later found in... Norway?, and is now under glass in the museum section. In addition to this note about the value of work, paint on the roof of the main building read: "There is a path to freedom. It's milestones are: Obedience, Honesty, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Hard Work, Discipline, Sacrifice, Truthfulness, Love of thy Fatherland."

Buildings left on the property describe various parts of life in the camp, and the property itself is mostly empty, with outlines of where barracks would have been. There's a nunnery at the back, crematoria off to one side, a Jewish memorial, block of solitary cells, and a maintenance building used as a museum and theatre (for a documentary about the camp) now.

This stands near the roll call grounds of the camp, and reads (in four languages): "May the example of those who were exterminated here between 1933-1945 because they resisted Nazism help to unite the living for the defence of peace and freedom and in respect for their fellow men." 

I started with the "Bunker," which was used for solitary confinement. Georg Elser was one of those kept here, who attempted to assassinate Hitler. Interestingly, cells were renovated for him, giving him three cells to move between, and he was allowed some personal effects. The "why" was never discussed, and I haven't been able to find it anywhere. Seems he should have received very different care...

Other individuals kept in the Bunker were clergymen, who had a set of cells to themselves (one person per cell), one for religious services, and another for day use. Three other cells were subdivided, leaving no space in each for a prisoner to sit or lie down: the "standing cells."

After liberation, the Bunker was used as offices for US military personnel, and was given a new coat of paint, which is still visible. A nice teal. Cell by cell, one can see peeling paint, broken pipes, etc., which probably aren't a whole lot different from what it would have looked like in it's heyday.

Shower room: then and now
This room had many purposes: bathing house, cinema, site of corporal punishment, concert hall

The museum started with an overview of the war's progression, specifically with the opening of concentration and extermination camps, subcamps, youth protective custody camps, ghettos, etc. throughout Europe. This system stretched the length and breadth of the continent. Dachau itself was opened in March 1933 to house political prisoners. By accounts, it doesn't operate in the modern conception of a concentration camp for some time; people are under watch, under fed, and barracks overpopulated, but they don't have the same level of suffering as modernity ascribes to concentration camps of the era. This would change, ramping up toward the end of the war. Medical experiments begin in 1942 along with corporal punishment, typhus breaks out in 1944 (63,000 people live in barracks built for 8,000).

At the end of the museum, some Dutch high schoolers had been part of a project to follow the lives of Dutch political prisoners in Dachau, called "Names, not Numbers." This exhibition was done in German and Dutch, so I couldn't follow much of it, but students read through their biographies, and many had artifacts from "their" prisoners and interviewed family. Another room had headstones of those whose last known location was Dachau.

After liberation, tens of thousands of people remained at Dachau, with no where else to go or awaiting assistance to return home. Refugees lived here for years after the war, with only the crematoria set aside as a place of remembrance. I did visit the crematoria area, which was expanded as the war went on, and it also included several gas chambers. I had some thoughts on how I might have portrayed things differently to make more of an impact on those visitors, but this is also a subject in which capturing realism isn't always possible... or a good idea.

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As this post is being written 10ish months after I visited, all the thoughts aren't as fresh. I've probably missed things, but that's the way life is. In summary: I visited a Concentration Camp for Christmas.