My first impression of Dachau was how quiet it was when we first entered. All other places we have went so far have been joyful or greeted with a boisterous greeting.  Dachau’s size seemed much larger to me. It’s hard to believe that there were camps way larger than this. We learned that, at a minimum, a camp could have 30 people. The maximum number at a camp was Auschwitz with around 100,000 people. Another damning fact was that there were 42,500 camps in total. Dachau had a large presence of SS soldiers in training on site. The SS are soldiers who believed in Hitlers mission ever more. They voluntary signed up for that distinct portion of the military. All German male citizens were obligated to serve. It was fascinating to learn how today the local police academy trains in the same barracks where the SS used to train. This rubbed me the wrong way, because it seems the Germans want to erase this history, but at the same time try to preserve it as a memory of fault and shame. Every camp was run by a company. For example, a particular camp in Munich was run by BMW. Today, in BMW’s logo, you can still see signs of this history. In the logo, the circular logo is cut out and shaped to look like a plane propeller. I never knew this till it was mentioned today.  This was just 1 of 400 camps in Munich, to put into perspective the number  of 42,500 camps. Another thing I hadn’t heard of before the tour was how the prisoners were divided up by categories and presented with a patch to distinguish them. For example, males dating males or Slavs were given their own individual symbol to dehumanize them even more. The tour guide also talked about the symbolism of how “12 million from 60 nations united by one symbol”. The symbol is of what looks almost like barbed wire, but its human bodies are contorted and depicted in a way of crawling over each other. The 12 million in this case is the total number of individuals killed. The last fascinating thing about the camp was the number of religious symbols depicted in and around the museum. For those in the camp, the only thing that seemed to keep them going was faith. This is what I took from the visit and will remember the most.

Faith was a large role in hope for those at Dachau.

Above is a church/chapel given to the Dachau memorial site, and it was said to be a sign of continued peace in Europe . This agreement clearly wasn’t kept.