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| Dachau |
After a quick lunch at the Hamburg Fish Market in Munich (a collection of sea-food carts set up in a public square), we boarded the S-bahn and made our way to the suburb of Dachau, home to the first concentration camp opened by the Nazi state. Another way in which Germany and Munich have created a collective memory of the Third Reich is by transforming former concentration camps into memorials
and museums so that all German citizens and foreign visitors can acknowledge the inhuman crimes
that the Nazis committed and try to ensure that this does not
happen again.
Dachau was a concentration camp that was created in 1933
by the Nazi government for prisoners that the the government saw as a
threat. This consisted of citizens who have opposed the Nazi regime,
such as communists and social democrats, as well as groups that the state deemed threatening to its idealized
Volksgemeinschaft, such as asocials and, of course, Jews.
The Nazis treated their prisoners inhumanly at first, making them
participate in tasks that were humiliating and that ultimately
dehumanize them, but as the war started this changed to forcing the
prisoners to work for the war effort. The linking of the labor from concentration camps to the greater German war effort in the museum exhibition concretely linked Nazi repression and terror to the genocidal war of conquest waged by the state.
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| Watchtowers on the Camp's Perimeter |
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| Bunks |
Prisoners were able to purchase food at
the beginning of the camps existence, but malnutrition was still a
problem. As the war dragged on, the food situation in the camp became worse
and malnutrition became more of a problem. The prisoners were treated
with harsh brutality, and they were also forced to participate in many inhuman
experiments. Many prisoners were murdered, especially when they became useless to the overall war
effort. In the end, around 54,000 prisoners were murdered in the Dachau
Concentration Camp. As we walked through the concentration
camp, we traced the prisoners daily lives.We walked through the
bunk rooms were the prisoners slept. This barracks consisted of a line of
very small bunk beds were they slept. We walked through the dining
area, where the prisoners showered and used the restroom. We then walked
through the harsh realities of the gas chambers and the crematories. At
first the crematorium was very small and fit about four bodies, but then
they built larger ones to make the process faster and more effective.
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| Toilets |
Within the camp are numerous memorials in memory of all the people that had passed away
in the camp. They did this through churches, and flowers, plaques, and a
memorial wall. Overall, the experience at the concentration camp was
very humbling and informative. We all left the camp having learned something new
and expanding our knowledge of Nazi terror.
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| The Location of Barracks 16 (1 of 35 in the Camp) |
After spending a full day grappling with National Socialism and its crimes, we walked back to the hostel where we collected our
things and then took an evening train to Nuremberg where we will be spending
the next few days exploring the city and it rich history.
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| Memorial in Dachau |
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