Dachau concentration camp

Sunday we went to the Dachau concentration camp, which was actually the first concentration camp in Germany. It served as a prototype for subsequent camps. It was a sobering experience, hence the separate post.

Just a few interesting facts about Dachau. Most of Dachau's prisoners were political prisoners, only 1/3 of prisoners were Jewish. Dachau was in operation for over 12 years, making it the longest-running concentration camp of Nazi Germany; official numbers report over 200,000 people imprisoned there with 26,000+ deaths at Dachau and another 10,000 at its satellite camps. Many of the most horrible medical experiments on prisoners took place at Dachau.

Dachau was designed primarily as a labor camp, not an extermination camp. However, there are 2 crematoria, the second having been built when the first was deemed too small. There are also gas chambers, but historians say they were never used.

The below memorial at the site was very moving for me personally. The statue's imagery with barbed wire and human bodies was too much for me to unemotionally view. And the nearby memorial with ashes of an unknown prisoner, which says 'never again' in several languages, stirred me.


The Holocaust wasn't too long ago for us to feel comfortably distant. There is a sort of protection in not remembering the Holocaust--it keeps us from having to think about nightmares the victims actually lived. But the benefits of remembering outweigh the discomforts. We absolutely MUST remember. The visit to Dachau gives me a new commitment to what the famous (and controversial) Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel said:

"I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented"