Sunday, September 30, 2007
Dachau: Never Forget
When the Nazis arrested the Communists,
I said nothing; after all, I was not a Communist.
When they locked up the Social Democrats,
I said nothing; after all, I was not a Social Democrat.
When they arrested the trade unionists,
I said nothing; after all, I was not a trade unionist.
When they arrested the Jews,
I said nothing; after all, I was not a Jew.
When they arrested me, there was no longer anyone who could protest.
--Pastor Martin Niemöller, who initially supported the Nazis, but was later a prisoner of the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps
The weekend before the kids returned home, I headed to Dachau to visit the former concentration camp. I had wanted to go for a while, but didn’t figure the kids were quite old enough to see what was there.
On March 22, 1933, a few weeks after Adolf Hilter had been appointed Reich Chancellor, Heinrich Himmler ordered that a concentration camp be built at Dachau for political prisoners. This was the beginning of a terror system in Dachau that cannot be compared with any other state persecution and penal system. In June 1933, Theodor Eicke was appointed commandant of the concentration camp. He developed an organizational plan and rules with detailed stipulations, which were later to be used for all concentration camps. This camp served as a model for all later concentration camps and as a “school of violence” for the SS men under whose command it stood. In the 12 years of its existence, more than 200,000 people from throughout Europe were imprisoned there and in the numerous subsidiary camps. More than 43,000 of these individuals died before the camp was liberated by the Americans on April 29, 1945.
The Jourhaus (above) was the only entrance to the prisoner camp, and the road leading to it ran directly from the SS camp.
The inscription on the Jourhaus gate reads, “Arbeit macht frei,” which means “work brings freedom” or “work shall set you free.” The phrase was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps, not as a mockery, not even literally -- as a false promise that those who worked to exhaustion would eventually be released -- but rather “as a kind of mystical declaration that self-sacrifice in the form of endless labor does in itself bring a kind of spiritual freedom.” Although it was common practice in Germany to post inscriptions of this sort at entrances to institutional properties and large estates, the slogan's use in this instance was ordered by SS General Theodor Eicke, inspector of concentration camps and first commandant of Dachau Concentration Camp. No one was ever released for working hard or for good behavior.
This was one of seven guard towers on the perimeter of the prisoner area.
The building below on the left was the maintenance building, and housed the camp’s kitchen, clothing store, workshops and the baths. Written on the roof (on the other side) in large letters was the phrase “There is one path to freedom. Its milestones are ‘Obedience, honesty, cleanliness, sobriety, diligence, orderliness, sacrifice, truthfulness, love of the fatherland.’”
Below is the bunker courtyard, between the maintenance building and the bunker. The SS inflicted camp punishments and executions here. It’s also where Soviet prisoners of war, resistance fighters and members of the SS who had been condemned to death were executed.
The building on the right was the bunker -- the camp prison. Inside these walls was a central site of terror within the camp. This was actually the third bunker on this site. The first two were relatively smaller, but this one was considered a modern prison with 137 cells.
The bunker was a center of terror within the camp. Prisoners were punished by being imprisoned for weeks and months on end, often in the dark and with insufficient food. Officials of the “Political Department” -- the Gestapo -- carried out interrogations in the bunker, often maltreating and torturing prisoners to extract confessions. An unknown number of prisoners were murdered here, or driven to suicide.
This is one of the rooms inside the bunker. Some of these rooms were subdivided into four standing-only cells, where prisoners were forced to stand for several days. These cells were about 2’6” square, which prevented prisoners from sitting or lying down. They were imprisoned here for up to 72 hours at a time. On top of that, the lack of light and air made the torture endured here even worse.
There were eight cells set aside for religious “special prisoners.” From 1943, the western part of the bunker corridor was divided off from the rest of the bunker. Prominent clergymen, like Pastor Martin Niemöller and Canon Johannes Neuhäusler, were imprisoned here in their own cells. The remaining rooms, such as this one with the altar, were used a day room or for joint religious services.
Other special prisoners included prominent critics of the regime, such as soldiers and German and foreign politicians, even including former supporters of the Nazi regime. The conditions of these prisoners were vastly better than those of the ordinary prisoners since they were not required to work, were not subjected to corporal maltreatment, received adequate food and were often permitted to maintain contacts with their families.
“It was strict detention, a full eight months, in darkness. No exercise. Hard bed. Bare wood. Three days: water and one pound of bread. Then one day prisoner’s food. Just a tin bowl and a spoon. No fork. No knife. No cup. No washing bowl. No soap. Nothing.”
-- Walter Buzengeiger, June 1934
“Four months in the bunker, four months’ detention in darkness, four months with hot food only every fourth day! Time crawls by. I only count every fourth day, and I’m amazed when the food comes and wakes me up -- I'm in a state of trance.”
-- Erwin Gostner, July 1938
The Gestapo even had an interrogation room in the bunker. The cavity walls and double doors of this room were to prevent cries from being heard outside.
From 1943, the bunker housed the British “special prisoner” Richard Stevens, who was arrested on a charge of conspiring to assassinate Hitler and overthrow the German government.
After the liberation, the building was used by the American military administration for internment of Nazi criminals, and later as a military prison.
This roll call area is where the prisoners were forced to line up mornings and evenings to be counted. During this time, they often had to stand motionless for several hours. If a prisoner was missing, such as after an escape attempt, this torture could be drawn out for many hours.
There were two rows of 17 barracks to house the prisoners. The first two barracks on either side were used for different purposes, with the remaining 15 per side accommodating the prisoners, with four dayrooms and dormitories each. Each barracks building was designed to hold 200 prisoners, but toward the end of the war were so overcrowded that there were up to 2,000 prisoners in each! One entire barrack was set aside for clergy -- called the priest block. The SS even used three of the barracks to conduct horrific medical experiments on the prisoners from 1942 on.
All 34 barracks were torn down in 1964 because of their dilapidated state, then the first one on either side was reconstructed. The outlines of where the barracks once stood are marked off with stone and rocks.
This reconstructed dormitory section shows the wooden bunks. The rooms were tightly-packed with blue-checkered covers on these beds. Each bed had to be precisely the same height, with the bed covers in perfect alignment. If anything was out of place, it was a crime and the offender was punished by an hour hanging at the stake by the wrists tied together behind the back.
This is another watch tower, beside the camp fence. The perimeter included grass strips, ditches with an electrified barbed-wire fence and the camp wall. If a prisoner stepped onto the grass strip, he was shot. Some prisoners ran into the border strip -- the prohibited zone -- on purpose in order to put an end to their suffering.
The Church and Convent of the Carmelite Nuns (above) was built in 1964 at the back of the camp.
This is the Catholic Mortal Agony of Christ Chapel (right), built in 1960, just in front of the convent.
The Protestant Church of Reconciliation was built in 1967.
The entrance to the Jewish Memorial, with the menorah perched atop an opening underneath.
In the summer of 1940, the SS had a crematorium built after the foreign prisoners arrived and the mortality rate had risen dramatically. It was located outside the prisoner camp and was only accessible by passing through the SS camp. A year later, it was already working beyond capacity, and was in operation until about April 1943. During this time, approximately 11,000 prisoners were cremated here.
In 1942-1943, a second, larger, crematorium was built. This one had four furnaces and a gas chamber for mass extermination. Official sources state that the gas chamber was never put into operation, although some sources doubt that claim.
Now for the sobering photos...
This is the waiting room, where victims were to have been instructed on how the supposed “showers” worked.
Then came the disrobing room where they were to leave their clothes before entering the gas chamber disguised as showers. Their clothing was to be brought to the disinfecting chambers before the next group could enter the room.
Next was the gas chamber -- the center of potential mass murder. The room was disguised as showers and equipped with fake shower spouts to mislead the prisoners and prevent them from refusing to enter. During 15 to 20 minutes, up to 150 people at a time could be suffocated to death through prussic acid poison gas.
Next on the assembly line was the death chamber, where the dead were to be brought before they were cremated.
This is the incinerator room. Each of the four furnaces could cremate two to three bodies at once. The ovens were connected to the chimney by an underground canal.
This room was also used for hangings. The victims were hung from the rafters directly in front of the burning ovens.
This room is also where, on Sept. 12, 1944, four young female officers of the British Forces attached to Special Operations Executive were brutally murdered and their bodies cremated. They had previously served the Resistance in France: Mrs. Yolande E.M. (Untemahrer) Beekman, Miss Madeleine Damerment, Miss Noorunisa Inayat Khan, and Mrs. Eliane S. (Browne Bartroli) Plewman.
This last room was another death chamber, this one used to store bodies brought from the prisoner camp to be cremated.
In the last weeks before the liberation of the camp, the dead could no longer be cremated due to a lack of coal. So, some 7,500 dead were buried in nearby mass graves.
The inscription on this memorial reads: “May the example of those who were exterminated here between 1933 – 1945 because they resisted Nazism help to unite the living for the defence of peace and freedom and in respect for their fellow man.”
History must never forget the cruel inhumanity of the Holocaust, while we continue to pay respect to its victims.
I said nothing; after all, I was not a Communist.
When they locked up the Social Democrats,
I said nothing; after all, I was not a Social Democrat.
When they arrested the trade unionists,
I said nothing; after all, I was not a trade unionist.
When they arrested the Jews,
I said nothing; after all, I was not a Jew.
When they arrested me, there was no longer anyone who could protest.
--Pastor Martin Niemöller, who initially supported the Nazis, but was later a prisoner of the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps
The weekend before the kids returned home, I headed to Dachau to visit the former concentration camp. I had wanted to go for a while, but didn’t figure the kids were quite old enough to see what was there.
On March 22, 1933, a few weeks after Adolf Hilter had been appointed Reich Chancellor, Heinrich Himmler ordered that a concentration camp be built at Dachau for political prisoners. This was the beginning of a terror system in Dachau that cannot be compared with any other state persecution and penal system. In June 1933, Theodor Eicke was appointed commandant of the concentration camp. He developed an organizational plan and rules with detailed stipulations, which were later to be used for all concentration camps. This camp served as a model for all later concentration camps and as a “school of violence” for the SS men under whose command it stood. In the 12 years of its existence, more than 200,000 people from throughout Europe were imprisoned there and in the numerous subsidiary camps. More than 43,000 of these individuals died before the camp was liberated by the Americans on April 29, 1945.The Jourhaus (above) was the only entrance to the prisoner camp, and the road leading to it ran directly from the SS camp.
The inscription on the Jourhaus gate reads, “Arbeit macht frei,” which means “work brings freedom” or “work shall set you free.” The phrase was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps, not as a mockery, not even literally -- as a false promise that those who worked to exhaustion would eventually be released -- but rather “as a kind of mystical declaration that self-sacrifice in the form of endless labor does in itself bring a kind of spiritual freedom.” Although it was common practice in Germany to post inscriptions of this sort at entrances to institutional properties and large estates, the slogan's use in this instance was ordered by SS General Theodor Eicke, inspector of concentration camps and first commandant of Dachau Concentration Camp. No one was ever released for working hard or for good behavior.
This was one of seven guard towers on the perimeter of the prisoner area.The building below on the left was the maintenance building, and housed the camp’s kitchen, clothing store, workshops and the baths. Written on the roof (on the other side) in large letters was the phrase “There is one path to freedom. Its milestones are ‘Obedience, honesty, cleanliness, sobriety, diligence, orderliness, sacrifice, truthfulness, love of the fatherland.’”
Below is the bunker courtyard, between the maintenance building and the bunker. The SS inflicted camp punishments and executions here. It’s also where Soviet prisoners of war, resistance fighters and members of the SS who had been condemned to death were executed.
The building on the right was the bunker -- the camp prison. Inside these walls was a central site of terror within the camp. This was actually the third bunker on this site. The first two were relatively smaller, but this one was considered a modern prison with 137 cells.
The bunker was a center of terror within the camp. Prisoners were punished by being imprisoned for weeks and months on end, often in the dark and with insufficient food. Officials of the “Political Department” -- the Gestapo -- carried out interrogations in the bunker, often maltreating and torturing prisoners to extract confessions. An unknown number of prisoners were murdered here, or driven to suicide.
This is one of the rooms inside the bunker. Some of these rooms were subdivided into four standing-only cells, where prisoners were forced to stand for several days. These cells were about 2’6” square, which prevented prisoners from sitting or lying down. They were imprisoned here for up to 72 hours at a time. On top of that, the lack of light and air made the torture endured here even worse.
There were eight cells set aside for religious “special prisoners.” From 1943, the western part of the bunker corridor was divided off from the rest of the bunker. Prominent clergymen, like Pastor Martin Niemöller and Canon Johannes Neuhäusler, were imprisoned here in their own cells. The remaining rooms, such as this one with the altar, were used a day room or for joint religious services.
Other special prisoners included prominent critics of the regime, such as soldiers and German and foreign politicians, even including former supporters of the Nazi regime. The conditions of these prisoners were vastly better than those of the ordinary prisoners since they were not required to work, were not subjected to corporal maltreatment, received adequate food and were often permitted to maintain contacts with their families.
“It was strict detention, a full eight months, in darkness. No exercise. Hard bed. Bare wood. Three days: water and one pound of bread. Then one day prisoner’s food. Just a tin bowl and a spoon. No fork. No knife. No cup. No washing bowl. No soap. Nothing.”-- Walter Buzengeiger, June 1934
“Four months in the bunker, four months’ detention in darkness, four months with hot food only every fourth day! Time crawls by. I only count every fourth day, and I’m amazed when the food comes and wakes me up -- I'm in a state of trance.”
-- Erwin Gostner, July 1938
The Gestapo even had an interrogation room in the bunker. The cavity walls and double doors of this room were to prevent cries from being heard outside.From 1943, the bunker housed the British “special prisoner” Richard Stevens, who was arrested on a charge of conspiring to assassinate Hitler and overthrow the German government.
After the liberation, the building was used by the American military administration for internment of Nazi criminals, and later as a military prison.
This roll call area is where the prisoners were forced to line up mornings and evenings to be counted. During this time, they often had to stand motionless for several hours. If a prisoner was missing, such as after an escape attempt, this torture could be drawn out for many hours.
There were two rows of 17 barracks to house the prisoners. The first two barracks on either side were used for different purposes, with the remaining 15 per side accommodating the prisoners, with four dayrooms and dormitories each. Each barracks building was designed to hold 200 prisoners, but toward the end of the war were so overcrowded that there were up to 2,000 prisoners in each! One entire barrack was set aside for clergy -- called the priest block. The SS even used three of the barracks to conduct horrific medical experiments on the prisoners from 1942 on.
All 34 barracks were torn down in 1964 because of their dilapidated state, then the first one on either side was reconstructed. The outlines of where the barracks once stood are marked off with stone and rocks.
This reconstructed dormitory section shows the wooden bunks. The rooms were tightly-packed with blue-checkered covers on these beds. Each bed had to be precisely the same height, with the bed covers in perfect alignment. If anything was out of place, it was a crime and the offender was punished by an hour hanging at the stake by the wrists tied together behind the back.
This is another watch tower, beside the camp fence. The perimeter included grass strips, ditches with an electrified barbed-wire fence and the camp wall. If a prisoner stepped onto the grass strip, he was shot. Some prisoners ran into the border strip -- the prohibited zone -- on purpose in order to put an end to their suffering.
The Church and Convent of the Carmelite Nuns (above) was built in 1964 at the back of the camp.This is the Catholic Mortal Agony of Christ Chapel (right), built in 1960, just in front of the convent.
The Protestant Church of Reconciliation was built in 1967.
The entrance to the Jewish Memorial, with the menorah perched atop an opening underneath.
In the summer of 1940, the SS had a crematorium built after the foreign prisoners arrived and the mortality rate had risen dramatically. It was located outside the prisoner camp and was only accessible by passing through the SS camp. A year later, it was already working beyond capacity, and was in operation until about April 1943. During this time, approximately 11,000 prisoners were cremated here.
In 1942-1943, a second, larger, crematorium was built. This one had four furnaces and a gas chamber for mass extermination. Official sources state that the gas chamber was never put into operation, although some sources doubt that claim.Now for the sobering photos...
This is the waiting room, where victims were to have been instructed on how the supposed “showers” worked.
Then came the disrobing room where they were to leave their clothes before entering the gas chamber disguised as showers. Their clothing was to be brought to the disinfecting chambers before the next group could enter the room.
Next was the gas chamber -- the center of potential mass murder. The room was disguised as showers and equipped with fake shower spouts to mislead the prisoners and prevent them from refusing to enter. During 15 to 20 minutes, up to 150 people at a time could be suffocated to death through prussic acid poison gas.
Next on the assembly line was the death chamber, where the dead were to be brought before they were cremated.
This is the incinerator room. Each of the four furnaces could cremate two to three bodies at once. The ovens were connected to the chimney by an underground canal.
This room was also used for hangings. The victims were hung from the rafters directly in front of the burning ovens.This room is also where, on Sept. 12, 1944, four young female officers of the British Forces attached to Special Operations Executive were brutally murdered and their bodies cremated. They had previously served the Resistance in France: Mrs. Yolande E.M. (Untemahrer) Beekman, Miss Madeleine Damerment, Miss Noorunisa Inayat Khan, and Mrs. Eliane S. (Browne Bartroli) Plewman.
This last room was another death chamber, this one used to store bodies brought from the prisoner camp to be cremated.In the last weeks before the liberation of the camp, the dead could no longer be cremated due to a lack of coal. So, some 7,500 dead were buried in nearby mass graves.
The inscription on this memorial reads: “May the example of those who were exterminated here between 1933 – 1945 because they resisted Nazism help to unite the living for the defence of peace and freedom and in respect for their fellow man.”History must never forget the cruel inhumanity of the Holocaust, while we continue to pay respect to its victims.
