The Deadly Design of Dachau

I walked through the wide open, rod-iron gate which read: Arbeit Macht Frei (“Work Will Set You Free”) and wandered through the dusty gravel to find myself in the middle of Dachau, the very first concentration camp, feeling a thousand different emotions. I was standing in the very place where thousands had stood before me, awaiting roll call, torture, and sometimes death. Dachau concentration camp is just one of thousands of concentration camps scattered around Europe, but it represents a history all its own, a very unique relationship with the nearby population, and such intricately planned buildings and objects.

I took a guided tour through Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site put on by a group called New Europe. If you have three hours to spend, I highly suggest the guided tour rather than the audio tour—because the personal stories made the tour more intimate and relatable. Before entering any of the buildings, we were briefed with a history of Dachau, located just 20 minutes outside of the city of Munich, where the National Socialist (Nazi) party began. What used to be an automotive factory was remodeled into a camp of political reeducation in 1933, only housing the Germans who opposed Nazi regime. Only after the Munich Agreement was signed in 1938 did Austrians become imprisoned here.

When World War II began, prisons got more crowded and due to poor living conditions prisoners were dying rapidly. Camps began to use forced labor and transitioned into extermination camps. It was at this time that other groups besides political adversaries were imprisoned. This included Soviet prisoners of war, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and because of Hitler’s fascination with the “Aryan Race”, Jewish people as well. Beginning in 1942, prisoners were made to work as slave laborers for armaments industries to support the war. Even the popular car company, Bavarian Motor Works (BMW), was known to have used prisoners for labor in their automotive factories during this period. Dachau was freed by the American troops in 1945, but had to contain the prisoners until they were free of disease to be released into the world again.

The history of the camp was captivating, but even more so was the extensive planning that went into every tiny detail of the camp. Walking into the camp, all you see is a sea of grey. Grey gravel. Grey rigid, boxy barracks. Grey torture cells. All of this was built in the Nazi-stlye architecture, a form of neoclassical architecture which was meant to convey a message of a timeless Nazi Empire that would last for all of time.

As our tour group took the path of the prisoners, we marched away from the illusory gate, which gave the impression that if a prisoner worked hard they would be set free—one of the many lies they were fed. We walked into the “welcoming building”, which was anything but welcoming. Here prisoners were stripped of everything that was their own—belongings, clothes, hair, name, dignity. In its place they were given a uniform with pockets they would be killed for using, made of the thinnest material and something unrecognizable for shoes, a tag to easily classify them, and a number—as if just one of many waiting in line on a Saturday morning at the bureau of motor vehicles. All of this occurred while staring at large print painted on the wall ahead stating, “No smoking”. A form of torture—reminding the prisoners they didn’t even have cigarettes to smoke.

Urban planning on a smaller scale was witnessed on our tour of the barracks. Although only two remain still standing, that was enough to stain my memory for a lifetime. There were different barracks to represent the different stages of Dachau and the need to fit more people in the already claustrophobic space. The original beds were stacked three beds high but contained dividers and shelves. The dividers gave each prisoner their own bed, no matter how small it was. The shelves were a subtle hint planned to constantly remind the prisoners that they didn’t have any possessions to even place on a shelf. Similar to crowding in big cities, crowding in concentration camps resulted in a loss of personal space, thus a loss in the dividers between beds. This small change almost tripled the number of people that could be contained. I was suffocating at the thought of how horribly one human could ever possibly treat another when we walked into the gas chamber/crematorium, chillingly deemed “Barrack X”. Just one more example of the deceitful scheming of the Nazi’s who labeled it the shower to fool prisoners. Because Dachau was the first concentration camp it was used as a model for the rest of them, this being the trial and original crematorium. Prisoners living in the camp when it was freed would not allow for its destruction so it could serve as a reminder to future generations.

Since the camp has been freed, many architectural changes have been implemented—the first being a series of religious churches and chapels of reconciliation. The one that stands out the most is the Protestant Church which has no square edges at all—exactly opposite of Nazi architecture. Among the many monuments one stands out above the rest. It is a statue of a prisoner with his head held high, hands in his pockets, wearing real clothes. Underneath it says “We honor the dead, to warn the living.” Not only does Dachau’s history serve as a reminder to the local community of Munich, and not even just the German people. Although locals may observe the history in a different light than a survivor, or an outsider like me, this monument is a reminder to all that genocide is not the answer to any problem. I left back through the same open gate, which is never allowed to close again, luckier than a lot of people who once entered it. I left shocked at the cruelty of humanity, sadness for the events that happened there, but with a wealth of knowledge and thankfulness to be who I am and where I am today, with the power to change genocide that still affect the world today.