What : The blueprint by which murder became a methodical industrialized process. A dark heavy cloak descends the moment I step through the main gate and into the site. There is dread, waiting. I promise myself to be open as much as possible, to really look and listen. Systematic torture and unrestrained cruelty. Forced medical experiments. Arbitrary execution by hanging or gunfire. The destruction of human dignity. The annihilation of hope. I had planned to stay for a few hours at most and leave around noon.
When I finally noticed clear skies and the change in sun-angle, I check my watch. Eight hours have flown by outside my bubble, which begins to dissolve.
In March , the Nazis established a concentration camp for political prisoners in the town of Dachau, 20 kilometres 12 miles northwest from Munich. The Dachau concentration camp began as a holding place for political opponents and prisoners. In short time, the SS took over command, and the camp would take on different people from around Europe, functioning as the model for the operation of subsequent concentration and extermination camps. For 12 years until , over thousand people were imprisoned at the camp; over thousand died here.
Allied troops liberated Dachau concentration camp on 29 April Twenty years later in , the former concentration camp reopened as a memorial- and education-site. There are many visuals below, and much of it is disturbing. Image from Dokumentationszentrum Obersalzberg in Berchtesgaden, along with my translation β 26 May Inside the front gate is the wide expanse of the roll-call square. Security fence, near the crematoria area. Prisoners who approached the fence were shot by guards without warning; some ran deliberately into the fence to commit suicide.
Crematoria area: Fritz Koelle memorial sculpture of the unknown prisoner. Exterior, crematorium number 1. About thousand prisoners were cremated here between and Within a year of initial operation, camp authorities built a second and larger crematorium. Many executions by hanging took place next to the four ovens in crematorium number 2. The gas chamber inside crematorium number 2 was used to kill by poison gas individuals and small groups of people.
