Dachau

Katie and I woke up early and headed around the town. There was a police set up in the main walkway and I hopped on a Polizei motorcycle. Then we walked by the square the people would have to salute Hitler to whenever they walked past, and fount a garden near it. We slowly made the 10:45 tour to Dachau, which is the first concentration camp. I learned so much during the tour! It seemed a bit rushed but I feel it is just because there was so much material to cover.

The main guy in charge of Germany chose the next commander and even though Hitler had the popular vote with 30 something percent he was not chosen because Hitler made the man sick to him stomach and could not stand to be in the same room as him. After the two men that he had chosen both failed extremely quickly, he appointed Hitler. Through a series of events Hitler was able to have more power than the president and was pretty much in complete control.



Dachau was the first concentration camp (which all others were modeled after) and all of the political leaders who were not for the Nazi regime were sent there. It used to be to make guns or something along those lines but closed down after WWI. They publicly announced that it was reopening two days before the first prisoners arrived. They told the town that it was to rehabilitate bad people back into society. On the entrance gates it said that work shall set you free. This was more for people who were not to be in the camp than anyone in it.

People who questioned the camp and heard stories about people who were released asked questions and the Nazi's invited them in. The bunkers were of course in top condition and they would keep the sketchy people lurking around to show that they were there to learn how to get back into society again. The rest of the camp would be hidden outside of the camp and the bodies would be cleaned up. They had one bunker to show the people how it looked even though nobody used it and they had top dental equipment that they used to take out organs.



Nobody at this camp was given a tattoo of their number, just color coded triangles. They were stripped of their belongings with a giant sign in front that said No Smoking. This is just one of the many psychological games that they would play with the prisoners since they no longer had any possessions. They would also be given pants with pockets, again nothing to put in the pockets. They were never allowed to put their hands inside of the pockets.



There were three styles of beds throughout the time the camp was open (it was the only camp that was opened the entire time of the war). The first beds had ladders, boards in between the beds and shelves. The shelves again were to remind them that they had nothing to put on them. The second round of beds had no shelves or ladders and the third round did not even have to partitions.





The bunkers were meant to hold 20 people and had 12 toilets and 2 sinks. At the last count of the camp, one of the bunkers had over 2,000 people in – two thousand. The prisoners had to do their chores in the morning, they had one hour to clean the bunker, make their beds, and use the bathroom. The hardest thing was making the bed. The beds had stripes on the sheets and the stripes had to be lined up horizontally and vertically. They would be measured by the Nazi’s and beaten or put on punishment if this was not done correctly…just imagine all of the beds all of the blankets having to line up… People would give up their bread to get others to make their beds as they could not get it. People would smuggle sticks, boards and even measuring devices into the bunkers to help make the beds and have them look rectangular and perfectly sized and lined up.

They gave up their bread…at first they got about ½ loaf, then ¼, 1/6, 1/12 and 1/18 for food and people needed this as it was hard work that they were doing. Some other food that they would be given was spinach soup, which was basically boiled water with grass clippings in. They would do this and laugh at the prisoners. The soldiers often stole the food that was for the prisoners making it even more difficult to get their food.

If they were not lucky enough to be put on a job then they were basically verbally and mentally abused all day. They would be made to dig huge holes in the pebbles with their bare hands, when they had tools sitting next to them. Then when they were done, they would be told that they did not need the whole and that they needed to fill it back in by their hands.

They had different experiments that would take place; putting them in water with ice until they passed out and then trying to revive them by either bringing in women and wrapping them in blankets to see about body heat or by then putting the bodies into boiling water. They would also look into if salt water could be drank and they would have control groups with real water and others with sea or salt water. Some of the water had chemicals in it to help with the salt, but of course it did not help.

The camp was meant for men until the end of the war when they had huge numbers of women and children come as well. The camp was meant to hold 6,000 but had more that 30,000 at some points. They were getting crazy numbers of people some years as many as 39,000 people. The Dachau administration recorded the intake of 206,206 prisoners in totally 31,951 deaths. At the end there was little evidence though of killings as they were getting so many people each day.



They had a crematorium but it quickly became too small and a larger one was built. This building had many sections. The first one was for people to go and get disinfected. The next they took of their clothes, the next was the gas chamber. They put little pellets of cyanide and other chemicals from outside and with the body heat and extra heat it would release the chemicals. Again this was torture as they had towels and soap set up for the prisoners. Some people were hung in front of the fires but despite all of this, there is no evidence of mass murder here and at the end of the war Jews were not even sent here since they were automatically ordered to death and sent to a death camp.



They say only one man escaped and that was before they built a hole on the inside of the wall, had electric fences, and created the man-made mote. He wrote about it when he escaped and the war was still going on but he did not give details of the escape as he had help and did not want to get his friends in trouble. He died before anyone found out the truth. During number call twice a day, everyone had to be there. The sick were carried out, the dead were dragged out and if someone had run away they stood at attention in the snow for hours until they were found. At the end of the war people would run from their line into the electric fences to die.

One random fact: I did not know that Hitler was on speed throughout the end of his regime.

I learned a lot and am glad that I went on the tour. It was interesting to see it and I am glad that it was a refugee camp afterwards as many of the things had been cleared out as it was more learning then really eerie as I had expected. There were some parts though that were just shocking. Where the showers were and to know that people would feel the warm shower and then go under and the Nazi’s would turn it to scolding hot and then ice cold and then beat the prisoners for moving was just insane. To see the chains that they were hung with and tortured from, to stand where bodies were piled up, to touch the walls that people were getting gased in and to walk down the hallway of the prison within a prison where the walls were really thick and people were made to be tortured and people would be put in boxes and have to stand for days or put in dark cells for 4 days then one piece of 1/16th of bread and then taken into the bright sun and so on. It was just a lot.