Dachau Concentration Camp, located just outside of Munich Germany, was the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany. Opened it 1933 by Heinrich Himmler and originally intended for Adolf Hitler’s political opponents, it grew to become a labor camp and marked the place where over 30,000 are thought to have died during World War II.
Dachau Concentration Camp Photo Essay
Dachau was not Auschwitz. Yet death occurred at Dachau too, especially after 1939, and is a sobering reminder that the Nazi government did not exclusively target Jews, but anyone who got in its way. This camp opened just five weeks after Hitler took power and in the coming years included political prisoners captured from all over Europe. While nearly one million Jews were killed in Auschwitz, this camp later included Jews but initially housed many German and Austrian dissenters, Jehovah Witnesses, homosexuals, members of the clergy, and others simply being accused of being unloyal to the Fatherland.
As men and women died during the war, the Nazis needed fresh labor. Thousands of prisoners were brought in from around Europe and put to work building armaments, planes, tanks, and other vital needs to wage war. Later in the war, those unfit for work were executed, often at nearby camps rather than Dachau itself. As the Allies neared Dachau in 1945, Nazis tried to evacuate the camp. Thousands of prisoners died along the way. Conditions were horrible, with malnutrition and lack of hygiene a key culprit of death.
The gas chambers and ovens are horrible sights to see, as was the understanding that many men and women were used as laboratory rats, with experiments being performed on camp prisoners, sometimes while they were still alive.
I will offer further reflections upon my visit to Dachau in a subsequent post, but offer this photo essay which showcases the camp and its depravity. There is so much to say and I don’t know how I will be able to formulate my thoughts, so we’ll start by these pictures:
This is part of my summer in Germany trip report.
Sobering. I have mixed feelings about these. On one hand it is vitally important to be reminded that these horrors occurred and need to be remembered. Of course. on the other, they have become quasi-tourist attractions despite their incredibly evil history.
I think Dachau is a particularly impressive museum with sobering admissions of guilt and honesty from Germany. It’s refreshing. It is a “tourist attraction” but it is hallowed grounds and everyone I encountered respected it as such.
I had the ability to visit ~ 10 years ago & left feeling similar thoughts as you. I commend those that work there as it would be such a heavy place to work day in & day out. I found the walk-through detailing how Hitler came to power & the vast array of people the Nazis persecuted very informative. Between that & a visit to the Haulocost museum in DC this spring, I’ve left shaken but vowed to never be part of something similar to what Germany did those many years ago. And I give them credit as a people for owning it, continuing to teach about it, etc. I often wonder if the USA could have the same approach to slavery if we’d be in a better place as a society
Thanks for those photos.
You reminded me of my photographic essay on Dachau, which comprised of two articles at The Gate, Matthew.
I am not posting links out of respect for your policy; but those two articles are easy to find.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and photographs of your visit.
Never forget…
Feel free to post your links, Brian. I’d like to see them myself.
Thank you, Matthew. I appreciate it. Here they are:
https://thegate.boardingarea.com/dachau-a-photographic-essay/
https://thegate.boardingarea.com/dachau-more-photographs-in-honor-of-holocaust-remembrance-day/
I liked comparing the photographs in your article to mine — which are from 2006; so 16 years ago — to see what had changed and what had stayed the same.
“…. but anyone who got in its way”
A very important reminder about the abuse of power in the current climate.
Before we visited here I wasn’t sure if I would be overwhelmed by what went on or just how I would feel. I’m glad I went as not only did I learn a good bit but it helped reinforce the ‘never forget’ mantra. While there were a few hundred people there when I visited it never had the ‘tourist vibe’ and people were respectful. I found it a very worthwhile place to visit.
The picture you posted of the “tree lined lane” You can see that same lane and trees in old pictures from WW II. Chilling.
I flew to Germany via Munich in spring of 2010. One stop we made was to Dachau. We were struck on the lack of living things in the camp. No birds singing , no insects chirping, no Noise from anything living excepting the people in the camp. I found it especially Creepy, that there was no living things there.
This was something I had wanted to do for a long time but often when I was in Germany it was the holidays and I wasn’t sure how the GF would take visiting a concentration camp. The last time we were in Germany (2016?) we finally went. It was a train ride from Munich and a short but crowded bus ride to it.
We kind of got there shortly before they had a English tour (maybe 11 am?). This lady from Peru gave the English tour and was very nice. It was kind of a weird thing weather wise because when we got to Dachau it had low level fog and made the place even more creepy.
It seemed strange to have nice homes next to the facility. I’m not sure I would want to live nearby.
Very sobering.
Mentioning that it was not just Jews killed but anyone the Germans didn’t like still happens today. Wikipedia is a fine example. Make written contributions they like and you’re ok. Writing something that is very mainstream but that the anonymous juveniles that vote themselves in as “administrators” don’t like and they use the excuse of “sockpuppet” to ban you, effectively killing you online. They will also kill others whom they label as “socks”.
Wikipedia is very much like Nazi Germany, which is one reason it should be viewed with extreme caution.
My first trip to Germany was to Munich and after checking into my hotel, the first place I had to visit was Dachau. For the same reason you and others here have expressed: not as a tourist but as a way of coming to grips with the history it represents and should never be forgotten…but seems too many times since WW2 has been. Much of my travel over the past 50 years has been built around visiting first hand what I call “the footsteps of history”…the places and events I’d either read about in history class or watched on the evening news. Munich indeed has an infamous history as birthplace of the Third Reich but these days particularly, we can learn much from its rise through the Nazi party and cooption of the German/Austrian masses.
We need to say for the record that these prison labor camps for communists operated by the Germans were destroyed before the end of the war. What we are seeing are newly constructed chambers and prison areas made in the 1950s or later. How much of these things were constructed for effect and how many are accurate is the question. It’s a multi billion dollar tourist industry as well as a multi billion dollar Hollywood industry plus a multi billion dollar publishing industry every single year that puts out Jewish movies about World War II and the like. If we care about history, we need to make sure we are not buying into falsehoods and exaggerations. An accurate historical record is important. Given how the Ukrainian Defense ministry releases fighter video game screenshots as real footage and it is published by the big media networks as fact, we can’t believe anything we are told or shown. Who knows what we have been lied to about. It goes back to even before the U.S.S. Maine was falsely used as a pretext to go to war with Spain.
We don’t have any memorials or tours of Soviet gulag camps where 40 million civilians died between 1930 and 1960. What is unfortunate about the Russians is they can’t be honest about the horrors of communism and the worst abuses in history, including the murder of 10 million Ukrainians between 1932-1941 in what is called the holomodor. The German National Socialists ended the genocide of the Ukrainians in 1941 and that’s why many Ukrainians celebrate the German National Socialists. The Russians can’t differentiate between Russia today and the Soviets of the past. There is no reason to celebrate the Soviets.
I toured Dachau in 1979 as a second lieutenant while stationed in Nuremberg. It was indeed sobering, like going to a funeral.