Today we visited the Dachau concentration camp. Dachau was the first concentration camp and set the standard or layout of all the other camps. Walking into the camp made me feel many emotions and felt so heavy. Our tour guide was so great and really helped us understand what had happened there, and even at other concentration camps. We wouldn’t have gotten as much out of the tour if he hadn’t been our tour guide. Walking around and seeing the barracks and the crematorium was really intense. What surprised me was the amount of empty space at the camp. They had this empty space because Nazis would line up the prisoners everyday and have roll call. People would have to stand still here for multiple hours everyday. This was so hard for them because they were malnourished and the weather, whether it was freezing or really hot, made it very difficult to stand for hours. I can’t imagine how hard that would’ve been. Another thing that stuck out to me was the two crematoriums. They started off with one, but expanded to two. This is because so many people were dying that they needed to be able to have more space. This shocked me. It also shocked me how thoroughly thought out the second crematorium was. It was intentionally built to easily kill people. They had a room for the people who were about to walk into the gas chamber where they tricked them and told them it was a shower. Then, they had the gas chamber in the next room, although Dachau didn’t use this gas chamber specifically for mass murder like most other camps did. The next room connected to that was a room where they put the bodies after the gas chamber. Then there was the crematorium. The fact that it was so thought out and specifically laid out that way so it was easier to murder people is sickening. This was probably the hardest thing for me to see. I can’t imagine suffering through that and I can’t imagine doing something like that to other people. It was a very sad but also important day because this needs to be talked about and remembered so it doesn’t happen again.
Day 8: Dachau
