The
Darkness of Dachau
August 27, 2001
It's hard to know how
a place will affect you. I didn't
really have any expectations about the Dachau Memorial Site. But Dave and
Ellen wanted to go,
and I'd been meaning to...
The
Memorial Site
for Concentration Camp Dachau is in the town of Dachau, just north of Munich. The
site's nearness to a large sophisticated city, with it's culture, museums and
university, somehow underscores the dreadfulness of the uncivilized things that happened here. We drove to Dachau, though one can
easily get there via the city train, the S-Bahn,
and a short bus ride. It
was a lovely summer day. The
sky was a cloudless blue, the sun brilliant; the Bavarian countryside with its
fields of browns, greens and golds presented an eye-pleasing landscape.
In contrast,
the Dachau Memorial Site is stark, made up of blacks, whites and grays -- gray and white guard towers, steel
gray barbed wire, a huge black sculpture, dull white buildings, gray concrete foundations,
and gravel and
river-smoothed stones covering the ground in shades of gray.
The contrast, the bareness, the lack of color all set the stage for the telling
of dark history that occurred here.
Dachau was the first concentration camp. It was initially established
in a munitions factory down the road in 1933, but was soon over-full of political
opponents --- Communists, socialists, priests, Jews, and other problem people. The prisoners built
the second camp on the present site. Today only a small remnant of that
camp remains, mostly crematorium ovens and prison cells. One barrack has been
rebuilt; it's full, though it contains nothing but tightly-packed, nailed-together, empty, wooden bunk
beds. The rest of the camp and any needed details are left
for the visitor to mentally construct. For example, the other 14 barracks were
located on the concrete foundations shown in this photo.
There's
a museum with historical exhibits and photos, all in black and white, all presented in a flat factual manner, all trying to objectively
document what happened here. The exhibits highlight some
key events: Hitler's rise to power, the ruthless quelling of opposition, restrictions on Jews, life in the camp,
and the eventual liberation of Dachau's survivors by the Allied Forces. There's also a 2-hour tour in
English every day and a
powerful 25-minute film in the theater 
hall. The
film's content was immobilizing;
when the announcer paused, the room was totally silent, no one moved, no one made a
sound;
it seemed no one was breathing.
The
camp's 15 barracks were each built to hold 208 male prisoners. At its fullest,
the Dachau Concentration Camp housed up to 1600 men in one barrack! These men,
by then mostly Jews,
were treated worse than animals: they were starved, punished, subjugated,
herded, over-worked and subjected to deathly experimentation. They lived under appalling
conditions in overcrowded unhealthy facilities, wearing dirty lice-infected
prisoner's garb, with 5 men trying to sleep in a narrow bunk bed,
crammed head to toe like sardines, each prisoner forced to lie on his side.
(Those who managed to fall sleep were
awakened in the middle of the night so everyone could together turn onto their other side.) Illness,
pain, and despair were rampant. Many died; many committed suicide. The Nazi
government and the guards were indifferent to the prisoner's survival; there were always more
prisoners to
meet their work needs.
We've all seen some
of the historical photos: survivors on liberation day (bald, emaciated men and women, in dingy, loosely hanging, striped
uniforms) or the
unbelievable piles of dead bodies -- pale, hollow-eyed heads, impossibly thin
arms and legs strewn about in random directions. This is one of
the Dachau photos.
I've
been to the Holocaust Memorials in Jerusalem and in Washington D. C. But
I've somehow managed to observe rather than confront the horror --- the reign of terror
and death that actually faced my family, the friends of my parents, and the families of
so many of my good friends. Clearly delving into this history would be
disturbing. Why go there?
Nonetheless,
the Memorial site at Dachau affected me
profoundly. The information presented made it easy to visualize a
day in the life of a prisoner 60 years ago and to imagine the years and years --
more than a dozen -- of misery and horror that happened here.
The reality, the starkness, and the
darkness that was Concentration Camp Dachau has been wafting around me like a vapor. Living in Germany and
being in an actual concentration camp has forced me to reflect on the Holocaust and to try to
better understand its causes. I've
been spending half days for the past 10 days searching the
Internet, reading, and
trying to learn more about the Why's. Why do people accept and
commit genocide? Why did so many readily embrace Hitler's vision
of Jews as "sub-human"? Why were ordinary Germans and other perpetrators
able to do what they did? Why is the history of anti-Semitism so
long?
Dachau left a strong impression on me: one that is more forceful, more intense than I expected;
one that has gone deeper than I initially would have wished.
Holocaust
Questions -- Some
Thoughts on the Why's
Two Auschwitz Poems by Lily
Brett
Home
Dachau was the first concentration camp. It was initially established
in a munitions factory down the road in 1933, but was soon over-full of political
opponents --- Communists, socialists, priests, Jews, and other problem people. The prisoners built
the second camp on the present site. Today only a small remnant of that
camp remains, mostly crematorium ovens and prison cells. One barrack has been
rebuilt; it's full, though it contains nothing but tightly-packed, nailed-together, empty, wooden bunk
beds. The rest of the camp and any needed details are left
for the visitor to mentally construct. For example, the other 14 barracks were
located on the concrete foundations shown in this photo. 
