Germany

Dachau Concentration Camp and Nazi Germany

Today I was lucky enough to visit the Dachau Concentration Camp for Memorial Day. World War II sites are places where I feel proudest to be American; honestly, while I am traveling it doesn’t happen as often as I would like. Dachau is just outside of Munich and took the better part of 5 hours to experience and tour.

This was the second concentration camp I’ve visited. When I was 21 I visited Austwitz, which is really more of a death or extermination camp, rather than a concentrated labor camp. In other words, people were taken to extermination camps after they were deemed unfit to work in concentration camps or if their “offense” was bad enough in the eyes of the Nazi power. 1.1 million people died in Austwitz, whereas 40,000 died in Dachau; one of the explanations why was that Nazi Germany needed the labor in order to continue its production as a war machine.

Dachau was much different than Austwitz, besides the obvious factor that is wasn’t so much of a killing machine; it focused more on labor and training SS guards to be completely brutal and inhumane towards their prisoners. It was a place of torture and desensitization that reminds me of medieval torture machines and all kind of war crimes and inhumane treatment of people. In addition, Dachau was far more known within the German country; facts about Austwitz and the atrocities committed there are still coming to light because of the cover-ups of the Nazi regimes.

Dachau started as a camp for political enemies, most prominently communists and major opposition to Hitler’s Third Reich. That is one of the primary ways he gained control over the country; he would send anyone who opposed his ideals to concentration camps to be “rehabilitated”. Mostly people were tortured and forced to work as slaves. Over time, his attention turned more broadly to the Jewish population and towards the extermination of eastern European populations, most devastatingly Poland.

Propaganda from the time period was hyperbolized and Hitler preyed upon the fear and weakness in the country’s economic infrastructure after WW1. His cabinet was completely ruthless, taking every advantage that they could to control the mindset of the population and terrorizing their enemies so that they either fled the country, or were sent to concentration camps such as Dachau.

Over 30,000 people at a time would be held at standstill in the courtyards of Dachau, oppressed by beatings and random killings by the SS guards that were at first posed as suicides. Over time they began to kill in front of the residents. Nearing the end of the war, they were forced into long marches that could last weeks and would claim thousands of lives at a time. When US soldiers arrived on April 29th 1945, 10,000 people were very sick and over 3,000 dead bodies lying about the camp. During the concentration camps functioning, over 40,000 people died; 40,000 is the number of confirmed deaths and that number is certain to be low. Over 200,000 people moved through the camp during its 12 year operation.

Concentration camps and extermination camps were run in largely the same way, except for one thing; prisoners at extermination camps were usually brought straight to the gas chambers, then cremated while prisoners at concentration camps were forced into slave labor. Both were considered less than human by SS guards and the guards were forced to call them “things or objects” rather than to refer to them as human beings. Their rights were stripped from them and they became the number on their sleeve, though in Austwitz they were infamously tattooed with their number, which was unique.

Humans were separated into categories based on their “crimes” against the Nazi party: Jews, unemployed, mentally unstable, homosexuals, immigrants, and other religious groups were completely discriminated against in the camps, largely as a result of the Nuremburg laws that institutionalized racism. They were given special patches on their arms and uniforms of dark blue and white to wear in the camp, most of which were very cold.

These human prisoners were processed on arrival; their clothes were stripped, all possessions were taken from them and they were shaved completely, disinfected, then showered torturously with boiling hot then extremely cold water in alternation, according to how much the SS guard wanted to torture the prisoner.They often laughed. Signs saying “Work is freedom” lined all of the concentration camps, a kind of false hope, which is something very important to the psychology of a concentration or death camp. They were subjected to morning role-calls where they would stand outside in the freezing cold for hours at a time at complete attention or be subjected to beatings which they had to count along with the guards. If they missed a number or didn’t know German, the SS guards would restart.

SS guards were particularly fanatical, an elitist group of torturers and killers that eventually were outsources from other countries, but that were originally only the craziest of the Germans. Eventually the Germans ran out of fanatics and had to recruit from other countries; these men were the worst of the worst and had no problems with torture or performing the most brutal of acts upon other human beings.

One of the most interesting and vile parts of Dachau were the psychological experiments. They essentially tested the limits of human survival upon unsuspecting victims, by performing high altitude tests on their brains and bodies, putting them into below freezing water to see how long they could survive, and trying experimental drugs on the prisoners. They would inject things like pathogens into their bodies then see how long they would survive with certain types of medications. Some of the most horrific photos came from this portion of the memorial.

Probably the most disturbing were the piles of bodies, frozen, completely malnourished, dead, sick with typhoid fever, you name it and it happened there. By the end of the war, Germany was out of food and the prisoners at the concentration and death camps were the first victims to go without.

That’s when the forced marches occurred, when Heinrich Himmler issued an order on the 14th of April 1945 to ensure that prisoners did not fall into the hands of the enemy; instead they should die. This is probably the biggest reason why the US troops arrived to see what must of been one of the most horrific sights of the war; corpses strewn about and piled together, nothing but skin and bones. Disease was rampant and many who survived until the liberation died afterwards because of their condition. The Americans held trials for the SS in Dachau for the next three years, until they handed the area back over to the Germans.

Why am I writing about such horrific things, or even visiting such terrible places and low points in human history? To learn from them. Desensitization is very real in today’s world, moreso than maybe ever before with the amount of people on our planet. These types of atrocities still exist today, genocide is a very real aspect of the world we live in. I believe that we can transcend such things if we can learn from our past.

“Never again” is what you will see in the memorials at the camps. In French, “plus jamais”, pretty much a direct translation. Every human is a unique individual, so in the same way that there were surely SS guards who doubted their leadership, there are surely ISIS members, Taliban members, and members of other terrorists groups who revolt against their leadership. Stereotypes can be useful, but we have to give people the opportunity to be more than a category or label. We owe it to ourselves to look for the humanity in others even when we have no reason to anymore. I believe that this is one of the fundamental tenets of hope and what will drive our race to higher level of cooperation and flourishing in the state of the modern world.

(The internet where I am staying is really bad, so I will add some pictures to this in the near future. Sorry I can’t offer more visuals on this post.)

 

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Adolph_Hitler_Berlin

Dear Berlin, I love you (but not you Hitler)

Berlin was a breath of fresh air after a long time of journeying in Vietnam, taking night buses and trying not to get scammed every day. It was a bit weird to be completely anonymous again, but nice all the same; I was able to practice Ashtanga in the park all three days that I visited Berlin without any interruption or even people staring at me which is something I have come to expect.

Berlin, Germany is a city of history and pain, which I must say is probably the vast majority of European cities. WWII history dominated the city, but in one of the most touching and personalized war exhibits I have ever seen (Austwitz was more personal, but the site’s history is also much more intense). Hitler and the Nazi regime were in full public view in one of the exhibits in the south of the city and the history of the wall was nothing short of incredible.

Berlin_wall
preserved portion of no-man’s land at the Berlin wall

The wall was up for 28 years; many people thought it would only last a few months. 1,000 people were killed in attempts to cross the wall and 5,000 or so were able to make it; but the fear and mental effects on the people were far more impacting.

It becomes pretty obvious that the Soviet Union was the driving force behind the creation of the wall; their tanks reinforced its creation and it wasn’t until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 that the wall was brought down. In addition, the people of Berlin were nearly all against its construction and it tore the city apart; government officials deliberately told the people there would be no wall and many thought it would only last a few days, maybe months. 28 years later, a church, cemetery, apartments, and countless lives were victims of the wall. The tributes to the people were personalized and specific; reading the stories brought you to the time period and it was easy to understand the grasp that fear had on the Berlin people.

There was another exhibit in the South of Berlin, near Potzdamer Platz that displayed details of the Nazi’s rise to power, making full view of Hitler and his regime’s eventual control over Germany, especially over Berlin. The feature picture of Hitler is from that exhibit. It is amazing to see the political climate that created the third Reich and the amount of control that it took over the German population. There was no explanations, simply facts and personal stories that allowed me formulate what it could have been like back in the 1930s and 40s in Berlin.

The food was great, but the Germans seem to eat about 90% meat (the other 10% is potatoes) which is just not my favorite style of food. I did end up having some Currywurst and Snitchzel, though I’m glad I don’t eat it on a daily basis. The people in Berlin were very kind and even though I didn’t go out at night, you could tell that there was a raging night club scene. If I go back, which I really hope to, that is something I will be doing my best to experience in full throttle. I needed to rest after two weeks of night buses and non-stop traveling in Vietnam.

I stayed in two hostels, both were good, though we stayed at the Pfefferbett and it wasn’t amazing; toilets flooded at night, their magnetic key system was absolutely horrible and the WiFi was bad, but it was pretty clean and the beds were nice. The East Seven Berlin hostel was stellar, clean, WiFi was great and the people who worked the hostel were very friendly. I definitely see myself heading back to Berlin in not too long, maybe for some music! That would be cool.

I recently put some new google Ads up on the site, I’m definitely going to keep them up because I think that they are completely non-intrusive and honestly, I’ve worked hard on this blog and think that I deserve at least some compensation for putting so much work into my writing and what it has become. Also, nothing is free; this blog takes money to maintain and I have been shouldering the cost completely. Think of it like I’m trying to get to the point where this blog is self-sustaining, because right now it isn’t.

So please don’t be turned off, understand that I have to eat like anyone else and I really want to get to the point where this blog sustains itself. Nothing is free. I am also completely out of space on my server so this might be my last couple of pictures for a while. If you are interested in supporting my writing, you can just send me an email @ etelford32@gmail.com.

Otherwise, have a great day, I’m off to explore Prague, possibly the most touristic city in Europe (seriously, tourists are everywhere here). More travel blogging on the way 😉

 

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