Today was in no way a fun or enjoyable day. We woke up early this morning and headed right to Dachau, which was the first concentration camp constructed. On the bus ride there, I was very nervous to actually step foot in the place where more than 42,000 people were killed. I had chills when entering though the gate that read “ARBEIT MACHT FREI” which translates to “work will set you free”. Reading this made me very sad knowing this was completely false and never came true.
After walking through the gate, we walked through very small barracks that were built for 200 people. For much of the time Dachau was active, these dormitories contained over 2,000 people rather than 200 with sometimes 3-4 sharing a twin sized bed with a tiny straw mattress. Prisoners were not allowed to open the windows in their barracks because they were told that they were “sub-human pigs” that did not deserve fresh air. Prisoners did not get fed much food at all, eating 600 calories a day if lucky. I saw photos of prisoners that looked like only skin and bones. We learned that the average weight of a prisoner was 60 pounds, not being remotely close to healthy or sustainable.
One punishment/form of torture that stood out to me and sent chills down my spine was called the pole hang. One could receive this punishment for many reasons, but a main one was when the Nazis did room inspections and they found anything remotely wrong, such as a speck of dirt on the floor, the prisoner responsible could be given this punishment. This was terrifying to me and acted as a form of torture. I will attach a sketch below regarding what this looked like. This position compressed the lungs, so along with causing significant pain it also made it very difficult to breath. I cannot possibly begin to fathom how the Nazis could be so soulless to be able to carry out this type of torture along with everything else they did.
Dachau was built as a work camp, not an extermination camp. They forced the prisoners to construct and deconstruct a massive mountain created from sand since there was no real work to be done.
Finally, after the Americans liberated the camp in 1945, they fed the malnourished prisoners a lot of food, and after eating all this food, an additional 2,200 prisoners died from not being able to handle the high amount of food intake. To me, this was devastating because these prisoners who thought they were finally free ended up dying from eating too much food. I cannot imagine the terror and trauma that the people imprisoned at these camps experienced, and it terrifies me thinking about what they must have gone through. Walking through the camp was a surreal experience and really made me feel sick, seeing all this horror right in front of me. I think that it was very important I had this experience and I believe it is important for everyone to have a similar experience because “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.
After leaving the camp, we had an hour long bus ride back to the hotel where I was able to take a nap and reflect on what I just saw. After arriving back at the hotel, I did some work on my project that I am presenting on Wednesday, and then got a great dinner at a Vietnamese place. I am very excited for tomorrow and the rest of the trip.
