Dachau Concentration camp memorial

Dachau was one of the first concentration camps built and a model for all others. A short S-baun ride out of Munich takes you there and it is free to enter the museum. I paid for an audio tour but frankly it didn't add much. You enter into the compound through the doors that the prisoners entered in and in the sole door decoration is the phrase "Work sets you free". This was to go with the propaganda that the prison camp was for re-education of lazy and criminal people.

I took a few pictures but really the place is important for the words and stories. Most of the buildings had been taken down but a few were reconstructed.

This is a picture of part of the reconstructed surround fence area. The green lawn in the compound is the death zone where if a prisoner sets foot there they are shot by the guards in the tower armed with machine guns. This was a way of suicide. Then there is the ditch, then the wire and finally the stone wall.

Also at Dachau were two crematoriums (old and newer and bigger as the deaths increased).

Originally the concentration camps were to hold people, then to kill them and then when the war changed from the blitz to a longer campaign they needed the prisoners to provide the labour, making munitions and to work as slaves to prepare occupied countries for the new Germanic settlers. Also at Dachau they had a gas chamber that was never used for massive executions but was used to kill off small groups at a time.

There was also prisoner experimentation on low pressure and hypothermia and it is just disgusting to think of the doctors (scientists?) being able to continue the experiments. Then again, there were those important psychological studies after the war to investigate how people could allow the atrocities to occur. The general conclusions were that most people could take these roles, it is not specific to the past times and other places. Who amongst us would be the sadistic killer when given unlimited powers and undesirables to deal with. I was also reminded of the phrase Enemy Non-combatants.