Today was a day that I honestly didn’t know how I would get through without crying. I felt so many intense and truly indescribable emotions today as we visited the concentration camp Dachau located just outside of Munich. We arrived at the site in the morning and took a walking tour of the memorial for roughly two hours.
Dachau was established in 1933 and was the first regular concentration camp organized by the Nazi government. Dachau was the foundation for all other concentration camps and served as a training center for camp guards. The camp imprisoned and brutally tormented Political leaders, outcasts, Jews, homosexuals, and more. Although Dachau wasn’t a death camp, it was a work camp in which about 42,000 people lost their lives.
Dachau wasn’t just a forced labor camp but also a location where many medical experiments were conducted. In 1942, German doctors performed cruel experiments on prisoners. As a result of these experiments, hundreds of prisoners lost their lives.
Prisoners slept in barracks with three levels. Oftentimes, multiple people would share a small twin-sized “bed”. The quote below barely captures the terrible sleeping conditions that the prisoners had to deal with. The bathrooms were unsanitary and filled with disease.
Next, we walked through the crematorium. The word “Brausebad” which translates to “shower” in English was displayed at the doorway. The prisoners who were directed to go to this building were under the impression that they would be taking a shower. They were asked to remove their clothes and were unaware of their fate. I felt uncomfortable and disgusted walking through the crematorium as I walked out alive, and thousands of people who walked through the same doors did not survive.
Overall, today was a day of reflection and a time to pay tribute to those who had passed away at Dachau. Our tour guide ended his guide with his hopes for the future that this part of history will never repeat itself. He mentioned that a way to ensure that this won’t occur again is to visit the camps and keep educating ourselves about what happened at this terrible place.