Dachau Concentration Camp

 "Work will make you free." It is the slogan written in iron at the gate to Dachau, the first concentration camp of the Nazi regime. It was enormous, much larger than I had suspected, with only 1/6 of the camp devoted to prisoners and the rest for SS officers, a plantation, sport field (for SS), and places of work. Dachau was made just 2 months after Hitler took over for political opponents, but then became the model camp for all of the other hundreds and hundreds of camps started throughout Europe. Although I have read my fair share of Holocaust and WW2 books and watched a few movies, I still learned a lot from our tour. Prisoners were shuffled from camp to camp based on whether they could work or not. A lot of the medical experimenting happened in Dachau, and most of it was not even helpful research. We all would agree that medical experimenting on prisoners is evil, but there wasn't even a good goal in mind for most of the subjects. The numbers- they just numb me just as the numbers killed in any war or genocide might. It is the individual stories told that really move us, and that is what many of the books and movies give us- a glimpse into the horror that was. The memorial is iron cast in the shape of people on barbed wire, and the inscription, written in multiple languages says, "never again."

Model of the whole camp. The straight rows of barracks on the right with the rectangle around it was the part where the prisoners were kept.

 One of the barracks in the foreground with rows of foundations for barracks (~60) beyond.

 Inside the barracks.

The museum was in the "maintenance building" so we took the path that the prisoners did as they walked through the gates and were registered, etc. given medical exams, and then sorted and told where they would be. How tragic.

The prison within the prison

Only one person escaped in 12 years. A view of the electric perimeter fence with "no man's zone"

Then a ditch and barbed wire before the electric fence

Crematorium ovens

Gas chamber (rarely used)

This memorial gives me chills. How I hope this statement is true.