In the Dachau concentration camp there were a total of 206k prisoners over 12 years. Eight thousand were women, some brought as prostitutes. Prisoners would come by train and pass through those iconic gates with the lie written on them, "work makes free." Work does not make free, only death made free for most who came there.
We stepped into a large gravel courtyard. This is the place where they would have a roll call several times a day. The longest recorded roll call was12 hours. The prisoners were required to stand with both hands by their sides. Sometimes guards poured water on them in winter, beat them or hung them from trees. Anything could be a reason to punish the prisoner or even the whole group.
Dachau was a work camp and not an extermination camp. When prisoners became too sick to work, sometimes they were sent to these extermination camps. There were actually 7 mothers and babies here on liberation day. These babies became the youngest survivors of the Holocaust.
Dachau was actually used as a refugee camp after the war. We stepped into the barracks which showed the type of bunks, three-high, the people lived in. After the war the barracks were converted to shops, school, etc as refugees lived here while Europe was resettled. After that time, the barracks were torn down. Two were reconstructed for the memorial while the foundations of the other barracks still stand.
Prisoners had to put in 12 hours a day of work. Average prisoner weight in 1940´s was 80 pounds. Four prisoners were in a bunk in later years. They were so small they could fit. Typhus broke out one year and in such small spaces spread quickly.
When the Allies liberated the camp in April 1945, there were 34k people. 2k died in first few weeks. Eating normal food again killed many. In last years 400 lived in one room meant for 150. In the washroom were12 toilets for 800 prisoners. Of course, to degrade even more, there was no privacy anywhere.
The guard towers circled the camp along with the fence. Anyone who put their foot on the grass near the fence was shot.The fence was a good way to commit suicide. A barrier of barbed wire, followed by a cement ditch, more barbed wire and another fence policed by dogs, followed by the last wall.
In 12 years, only one prisoner escaped. He was a prominent communist that the guards kept coaxing to commit suicide. He decided to just escape since he would die anyway. He went under the fence and found someone who would keep him and get documents for him. 32k died here but 120k taken to other camps. Hard to tell how many survived in total.
1933-39 500 died
1940-45 31,500 died
We toured the fence and headed for the crematorium. This was the hardest to take in. The dead were cremated so their graves could not become a demonstration place. There was a gas chamber built at Dachau but it may not have been used. We saw the huge disinfection chambers for the clothes of the dead. We entered the small room where 150 people at a time would have disrobed, unaware that the shower would end their life. The Nazis did this to avoid any panic. They even outfitted the shower with fake shower heads. We stood in this room and saw the grates where poison gas would have come through.
As we entered, a man was singing or kind of moaning, sitting on a nearby bench. His moan was in another language but seemed to be kind of a prayer. A statue of a haggard, bald, thin man in a coat explains "we built this to remember, and that such evil would never again be repeated."
Most were Jews in this camp, but we also saw the cells of special prisoners who were Christians - mainly clergy. One thousand priests died here. We stopped outside of cell 31. It was here Martin Niemlerr, a contemporary of Dietrich Bonnhoeffer was imprisoned. I imagined the prayers. I imagined the hours staring out those windows. Did the men whisper to each other? What did they hear every day? Guards, dogs barking, marching boots on that gravel, even birds stubbornly singing? What kind of comfort did the Lord send them? I make it a goal to read the memoirs. Many of the prisoners had secret diaries.
There was the incredible story of one man who actually was released to go home for 2 weeks to Luxembourg because his father died. Why would any return? The answer - the guards told him they would kill all prisoners from Luxembourg. He returned.
The Holocaust is a story of unfathomable evil - hard to wrap your mind around. It was not only about winning a war, not about simply eliminating undesirables but a wretched fiendishness that maimed physically and mentally, that drove to torture and dehumanize what God holds sacred.
One of our kids said simply both the prisoners and guards were imprisoned. The question is always asked, how could the guards do such things? The insipid route to full compliance and participation is filled with fear and brainwashing. Hundreds of Jews would be standing on the platform while only a few guards attended. We wonder at the submission and fearof those being herded. Could they have overtaken them?
At our debrief, we could say there may be a time we have to give our lives to stop injustice. There may be a time we die for our faith. You have to have your mind made up.
There was a heaviness to stand on this ground. The suicide rate even today is unusually high in Dachau. There are 10 Carmelite nuns who live in the wall just outside of Dachau. Their days are spent in silent prayer. There are three churches and one temple nearby. Faith springs up in the wreckage as in the aftermath of destruction.
The blood still cries out for the lives spent here. The prayer rises up to heaven: never forget and never again.
