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Saturday, November 3, 2018

Arbeit Macht Frei - Dachau, Germany

Arbeit Macht Frei translates as Work will set you free. 

These are the words welded into the wrought-iron gate at the Dachau Concentration Camp outside of Munich.  What does this phrase really mean?  Is it to be taken literally?  Some prisoners were released.  Hoess, the first commandant at the Auschwitz main camp, described in his autobiography that the phrase meant that work sets one free in the spiritual sense.  Misery is lost in toil, I suppose.   Was this phrase SS propaganda to mask the nature and purpose of the camp?  To those living outside of the camp, the words, Arbeit Macht Frei, might suggest the purpose of the camp as a labor and re-education facility.  This connotation might diminish and sanitize its true objective.  
Commandant's quarters
First established as a concentration camp for political prisoners, the camp later held captive citizens from a number of countries and ethnic groups as Nazi aggressions rose throughout the 1930s and 1940s. 
Dachau camp layout
Upon arrival to the camp, prisoners would pass though the Jourhaus building with the wrought iron gate shown above.  The Jourhaus was the main office of SS camp personnel.  This building segregated the camp from the outside world.  Each day, camp work-groups would march out through this gate to the factories and then back at the end of the work day. Each day, the prisoners would be reminded that Arbeit Macht Frei. 
Jourhaus
Having passed through this gate, the visitor is met with a stark expanse of the camp grounds.  Where thirty-four barracks once stood, the ground is barren with the exception of two reconstructed barracks and foundation outlines remaining from the thirty-two razed barracks.  Dotting the landscape are several watch towers.  For these long gone barracks, remaining as a testament to their existence is the foundation outline circumscribing each of thirty-two cement barracks' numbers.
Camp where barracks once stood
Foundation outline with barrack number
Guard tower in background
Near the entrance to the camp is the International Memorial which reads,
May the example of those who were exterminated here between 1933 -1945 because they resisted Nazism help to unite the living for the defence of peace and freedom and respect for their fellow men
International Memorial
At one end of the compound is a large, U-shaped Maintenance building that today houses the memorial exhibitions and movie theater.  The exhibitions provide details on each room's historical function.  Prisoner kitchen, laundry, baths, storerooms, and workshops are all presented.  Also on display is the Shunt room whereby newly arrived prisoners were processed for admission into the camp.  At this stage, a new arrival was stripped of everything including individuality.  On the roof of this building was once painted the phrase,
There is one path to freedom. Its milestones are: obedience, honesty, cleanliness, sobriety, diligence, orderliness, self-sacrifice, truthfulness, love of the fatherland
Prisoners would face this building during Roll Calls with this phrase as a constant reminder.
Maintenance Building with Memorial in foreground
Two of the barracks have been reconstructed for the memorial illustrating the living conditions under which the occupants lived.  Each barrack housed 140 people.

At the opposite end of the camp and segregated from the main camp is the crematorium.  The crematorium is divided into several rooms, each with a specific purpose.  At the height of operations the furnaces were working 24 hours a day.
Crematorium

The crematorium at Dachau has a gas chamber in an adjoining room as well but was not used for that purpose.  Exhibits in the Maintenance building suggest that while it may not have been used for its designed purpose, it was used for SS interrogations and torture.  
Gas Chamber
When we first discussed travel to Austria and Germany, Dachau was one of the sites that my wife wanted to visit if we could fit it into the schedule.  Well, Dachau is an easy half-day trip from Munich and can be reached in about 40 minutes using a combination of train and bus.

I pondered sharing this visit long and hard.  The camp was not easy to experience firsthand.  The exhibits were heartbreaking.  Reviewing these photos of our Dachau day-trip, the thoughts and sensations relived tempted me to reconsider this post more than once.  In the end, sharing this horrific piece of history seemed appropriate.  

Quite an overpowering experience.  With memorials such as Dachau, how could such brutality ever be forgotten?

45 comments:

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    1. I was not keen on a visit either but the experience was worthwhile.

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    1. Norm, that was my intended result. Thank you for reading of my experience there.

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  3. A place I visited three years ago ... impressive, to do, to share so that never more, never more ...

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    1. It is a very melancholy place. The exhibits bring that suffering to the fore. Never more.

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  4. Thanks for sharing Jonathan it was brave of you to do so. The wife and I visited Oradour Sur Glane last year and the atmosphere of the terrible events that took place there still remain today. Not sure I could have done Dachau. I suppose it is a good thing these places are preserved, they act as a touchstone for generations to come who might be allowed to forget or worse deny the terrible things that some people are capable of.

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    1. I was not familiar with the events at Oradour Sur Glane. After reading your response, I investigated this event. Truly horrific.

      Keeping these memorials as a reminder for future generations is public good coming from evil.

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  5. Visited Dachau 35+ years ago with a couple of local German lads when on a school exchange visit - I found it odd that all around the area, the road signs still point the way to "KZ - Dachau" - ie Konzentrationslager (Concentration Camp). My host parents had lived in a small town of Wolfratshausen near Munich and the mother remembered seeing the SS moving the last remaining prisoners along the roads as the Allied advance closed in on the camp. During the same visit I sat through an English lesson (in a German High School) where they read a poem called The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner (see below) The teacher was middle aged (in 1978/9) and was a young child during the war - he said that they were bombed around the clock - the British bombers came at night and the American bombers during the day

    The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner


    From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
    And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
    Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
    I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
    When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

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    1. Your family story is touching. What it must be like to hold the memories of this time that your mother holds. Today, directions still point to KZ-Gettenkstatte which is the bus stop at the memorial site.

      What an eerie poem to teach young students.

      Thank you very much for sharing your personal experiences.

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    2. Sorry Jonathan I think you misunderstood slightly - I am a Scot, I visited Germany on a school exchange trip- it was the German lady I was staying with who remembered the war - my own Mum was 18 in 1945 - she remembered a German bomber strafing the entire main shopping street of our home town (Montrose on E Coast of Scotland) and not in hitting a single person! There was an RAF base at Montrose with a Polish fighter squadron based there - we used to have a few old Poles in the town who had not gone home after 1945 when the Communists took power in Eastern Europe.

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    3. Thanks for taking the time to correct my misunderstanding. Still, the first hand account of the Dachau situation is most interesting. Your mother's war experience is no less interesting. To be subjected to bombing raids must have been an unnerving experience. Thank you for two great stories.

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  6. Thank you for this. A poignant and informative post.
    Lest we forget.

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  7. An important reminder in these days when we seem to be heading down paths that led to horrors such as this in what we thought were "modern" societies.

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    1. Ed, we would like to think that these horrors are not repeatable but one never knows. Better to remember and take stock in history lest we doom ourselves to repeating it.

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  8. Lest we forget.

    I went to the Holocaust Muesum in Washington DC and found it an eye opening and heart rending experience. If I ever do get to Europe again I would visit a place like this. My wife has been to one. Thanks for posting the pictures and sharing your thoughts.

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    1. Thank you for your comments, Stew.

      I have visited D.C. a few times and have yet to muster the strength to visit the Holocaust Museum. After this trip to Dachau, I think I am prepared for a visit to the D.C. museum.

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  9. Jonathan, I am with Conrad, not sure that I could make that trip.

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  10. A very humbling post Jonathon, thank you for sharing this difficult post.

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    1. Ray, exposure to these events even though long past, are good reminders.

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  11. Thanks for post this. We have a nazi german death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. A place like other death camps is full of sadness ...

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    1. Michal, many of your countrymen were imprisoned at Dachau during the war. My understanding is that many of those there were of Polish origins.

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    2. Yes. This is all inconceivable. How much have to hate other people to bring something like that.

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  12. I had a very similar visit to Auschwitz a couple of years. Unfortunately, I fear such brutality has been forgotten. By attributing it to "the Nazis", we have convinced ourselves that it was some alien aberration. But it was (in my case) only a generation ago, in a place not very far away by those same people that make such reliable cars.

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    1. Jeremy, your insight is spot-on, I think. Labeling this period of history as an "alien aberration" only possible under the Nazi regime, may increase the risk of a similar event occurring again. How many generations must pass before these lessons are forgotten or minimized?

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  13. Your last lines is what we all got to keep in mind.
    All this horrible chapter of history mast never be forgotten so our children and grand children be aware of what men is capable to do.
    Thank you for a heartbreaking journey!

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    1. By remembering these events, perhaps, we reduce the chance of it happening again.

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  14. Very sobering, and always worth being reminded of man's inhumanity to man. Thanks for posting, Jonathan.

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  15. “Lest we forget...”
    I think such a visit to be both difficult and extremely valuable. As you know, there is a whole group of people who deny the Holocaust ever happened. Such grand self delusion seems impossible, except when fueled by deep sated anti-Semitism. In HS, when reading the Diary if Anne Frank, we were shown US army films made when the concentration camps were liberated... truly horrible. My Dad,s unit was involved in one such operation. He never spoke of it except to say that after that no SS were taken prisoner by his unit.

    It was common in my early years of practice to see elderly Jewish patients with small, poorly done blue ink tattoos on their shoulders, used to track them in the registry of the concentration camp... always a chilling reminder of what happened.

    And indeed, in case we comfortably assume this was a German aberration, we have ample examples of hatred based on race, religion, or sexual orientation in our country: the murder of Mathew Sheppard 30 years ago, the cold blooded killings at Emmanuel Baptist church a few years ago, and the shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue last week. I shall refrain from any political observations.

    I recall seeing the musical “South Pacific” in NYC with my parents when I was about 16 years old - what a great show! However, I had to ask my parents to explain the key tension in the story, which was the taboo against inter-racial, Asian - Caucassian relationships, as bitterly satirized in the powerful song from the same musical, “You have to be carefully taught.” I am fortunate that my parents taught me many things, but very little if that was prejudice or hatred. We are all so much more alike than we are different, and our differences are far more to be appreciated than hated or feared.

    Thanks for the post on this difficult visit and topic, Jon.

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    1. Peter, your comments, experience, and insights are much appreciated. I can only imagine the emotions you experienced when seeing your patients with these marks, knowing their history.

      Very well crafted comment, Peter.

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    2. And it wasn’t like those tattoos were names... they were just numbers... Large numbers.

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  16. Thanks for Sharing Jonathan...I won’t repeat all the positive comments above. Definately the type of place to visit to get a feel for the real horror of what people can do to people. In a strange way despite my lifelong love of all things military and history, I detest violence of all forms never mind the horror you describe in your visit. A good reminder to us all 🙂

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    1. Matt, you are not alone in what you view as a conundrum between abhorring violence and enjoying military history and wargaming.

      I am the same. My wife often asks how can I enjoy military history and wargaming while opposing war and conflict. Perhaps having avid interests in history and recreating these past exploits bring understanding to this seeming dichotomy?

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  17. A very solemn visit of a most dark period of history. Thanks for the post.

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    1. A dark period of history, indeed, Dean. Thank you for your visit.

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  18. Chilling in the main due to your own well worded writeup.

    Its difficult for our generation and harder still for our children's to comprehend fully the nightmarish evil of those times. I listened well to my grandmother's tales of the nazi occupation of Greece when she was a teen. The hatred and ignorance of man frightens me and i am sincerely concerned over how similar signs of the hatred from 80 years ago are rearing their ugly head once more.

    Thanks for sharing.

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    1. I appreciate both your support and your fine contribution to this discussion. Listening to tales of Nazi-occupied Greece from an ancestor who lived through that those times would be fascinating.

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  19. Not much to add. Powerful stuff. We say 'never again' and yet it seems a recurring narrative across the developing world.

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    1. Seems our recollections and firsthand knowledge of past events really only survive for three or four generations. Could these cycles of limited remembrance and memory decay be what drives Kondratieff wave theory?

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  20. Great,if uncomfortable post, my daughter went to a camp on her school history trip to Berlin, not sure Id want to, but probably should!
    Best Iain

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    1. Iain, back to more comfortable topics next time when focus returns to the painting desk.

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