"Work sets you free"

“Arbeit Macht Frei” or “Work sets you free.” These are the words that the prisoners saw as they entered Dachau Camp. These words encouraged the prisoners that if you work hard enough, the Nazis will release you. Little did they know that the phrase was strategically placed there to mentally and emotionally torture. Dachau was the first concentration camp and it was the only one to span the entire reign of the Third Reich. It is located about 16 km from Munich or in my case, about a 15-minute train ride. After my tour, I learned all about Dachau’s historical and political importance to Germany.

Dachau was originally an ammunition factory during World War I and it provided lots of jobs to the local German people. The ammunition factory was closed as a result of the Treaty of Versailles and consequently many people lost their jobs. In 1933, the National Socialist Party, the Nazis, established Dachau as the first concentration camp. During Dachau’s first stage, people were interned for political opposition to the Nazis. The model of the building that I saw was not built to holdthe shear numbers of the people that were detained and tortured there. Each stage of was marked on the tour with a different room. The first room showed the initial number and set-up of the barracks.

The second stage included racial discrimination and increased amounts of terror at the camps. My tour guide made an interesting distinction between prison and concentration camp. “A prison is usually of citizens of that country, people who have rights in the country, where a concentration camp, all of its detainees are striped of all their clothes, hair, and basic human rights.”

The third room the tour guide, Marcin, took us to was the final stage of the construction of the Dachau barracks. Basically just rows on rows of bunk beads. This time, there was no distinction between beds nor the people that slept in them. This was designed so that more people would fit in each bed and the Nazis found any reason they wanted to put a person in the camp. It was sickening to think about the number of people that were in each bed. It is even more tragic to think about the living conditions of the people that lived in these beds.

My least favorite part of the tour was when we walked to Barrack X. It was disturbing because that was the site of the gas chamber and crematorium. It was so eerie walking through the building where mass murders of innocent people occurred. The first room in the gas chamber building was the “waiting room” where the people awaited what they were told was “showers.” The next room was the shower room and the Nazis had placed showerheads in this room to continue the psychological torture. The next room was the crematorium where all the dead bodies were burned after they were gassed in the "showers."

Dachau was not the only camp to have these conditions and terrors. I took the picture below from the museum on site because it is a map that shows the number, size, and location of the other concentration and extermination camps. An interesting point about the map is that there are no boarders. The camps were all over Europe because of Germany’s and the Nazi’s strength and aggression and therefore boarders are invisible. The horror of the Nazis witnessed no boarders.

It was so difficult to walk around on those grounds and just imagine all the people who had lived there and those who died at the hands of the SS guards. Needless to say it was a quiet evening for me because I was trying to understand and come to terms with what I had witnessed that day. I know that it was hard for me to deal with what I saw and learned but it is impressive to see how the Germans have come to terms with it and accept it as part of their history. In 1945, the US Army liberated the people of Dachau. Since then, the camp serves as a reminder to the Germans to, “ Honor the dead to warn the living” (written on statue below). The Germans built this memorial of the former concentration camp in order to do just that, honor the people who died at Dachau, in order to warn the living that this should never happen again.

This experience was a very meaningful one for me and it is something that I will remember for the rest of my life. I recommend the tour with NewEurope because it included transportation and the tour guides are very knowledgeable. It was a lengthy, paid tour but I would do it over in a heartbeat because I know that I learned a lot of important historical information. There are many accounts and information about life at Dachau or the brutality of the SS guards and information can be found at the Dachau site.