The very first thing we did in Munich was to take a tour to see Dachau, the concentration camp that is located nearby. In 1933, Dachau became the first concentration camp to open and became the model for all other camps. Dachau, and all of the other camps, had three words written on their gates, "Arbeit Macht Frei," which means, "Work Will Free You." This was an effort to disguise the camps as places for "rehabilitation."
By the end of the war, over 2,000 camps were located across all of Europe. There were many different types of camps and sub-camps and their nomenclature was all part of the Nazi propoganda. Dachau was considered a work camp where prisoners were forced to do hard labor with little or no food. It was not considered to be an extermination camp, but still, thousands died there. The extermination camps came later with the advent of the Final Solution and were mostly located outside of Germany.
Dachau was opened as a place to send Hitler's political opposers. As the camp system grew, Dachau became home to many different types of prisoners: criminals already in prison, Soviets, homosexuals, asocials, gypsies, prostitutes, Jehovah's witnesses, immigrants, and anyone who was considered a threat to Hitler's power. On Liberation Day, over 34 different nationalities were represented among the survivors.
The camp was originally built with barracks that held 208 people each and the total capacity of the camp was around 5,000. However, by the end of the war, these barracks were holding 1,500 to 2,097 each.
After the war, Dachau was turned into a refugee camp and the refugees lived in the barracks. The barracks were eventually torn down, so only the administrative buildings and crematorium are original.
Dachau did have a gas chamber, although it was never used. The gas that the Nazi's used in the extermination camps was called Zyklon B and was invented by a Jewish chemist that won a Nobel prize. It was originally used to fumigate pests and it was never imagined that it would be used on humans in only a few years. The gas chamber was very clearly labeled "brausebad" or shower to minimize the panic of the victims.
Immediately following the gas chamber is the crematorium, where four ovens were kept going by actual prisoners of the camp. Thousands were dying and the Nazis needed an efficient way of getting rid of the remains. Once you were assigned to work in the crematorium, you weren't expected to live very long. These workers and even some SS guards were regularly assasinated so that word wouldn't spread to other parts of the camp what was happening in this building. At the very end when panic among the guards was rising due to the close proximity of the Allies, mass graves were dug near Dachau. The registered death count for Dachau is 31, 951, but there were thousands of deaths that went uncounted, like the mass graves and a train of prisoners from Birkenau.
Dachau was liberated on April 29, 1945 by American troops. We were at Dachau a little over a week after the 65th anniversary. Survivors and liberators return every year to commemorate the day. They are all very old and not as many are returning each year. Our guide said that she feels priveleged to have personally met some of these people and worries about in the future when guides will not have had that opportunity. During an interview with former prisoners, the question came up, "What made survival possible in such conditions?" The response was unanimous, two things: solidarity and unity among all of the prisoners regardless of their race, politics, religion, etc. and a strong hope that they would all escape one day and to be able to tell the world what had happened and to ensure that it would happen...
...NEVER AGAIN.
The very first thing we did in Munich was to take a tour to see Dachau, the concentration camp that is located nearby. In 1933, Dachau became the first concentration camp to open and became the model for all other camps. Dachau, and all of the other camps, had three words written on their gates, "Arbeit Macht Frei," which means, "Work Will Free You." This was an effort to disguise the camps as places for "rehabilitation."
By the end of the war, over 2,000 camps were located across all of Europe. There were many different types of camps and sub-camps and their nomenclature was all part of the Nazi propoganda. Dachau was considered a work camp where prisoners were forced to do hard labor with little or no food. It was not considered to be an extermination camp, but still, thousands died there. The extermination camps came later with the advent of the Final Solution and were mostly located outside of Germany.
Dachau was opened as a place to send Hitler's political opposers. As the camp system grew, Dachau became home to many different types of prisoners: criminals already in prison, Soviets, homosexuals, asocials, gypsies, prostitutes, Jehovah's witnesses, immigrants, and anyone who was considered a threat to Hitler's power. On Liberation Day, over 34 different nationalities were represented among the survivors.
The camp was originally built with barracks that held 208 people each and the total capacity of the camp was around 5,000. However, by the end of the war, these barracks were holding 1,500 to 2,097 each.
After the war, Dachau was turned into a refugee camp and the refugees lived in the barracks. The barracks were eventually torn down, so only the administrative buildings and crematorium are original.
Dachau did have a gas chamber, although it was never used. The gas that the Nazi's used in the extermination camps was called Zyklon B and was invented by a Jewish chemist that won a Nobel prize. It was originally used to fumigate pests and it was never imagined that it would be used on humans in only a few years. The gas chamber was very clearly labeled "brausebad" or shower to minimize the panic of the victims.
Immediately following the gas chamber is the crematorium, where four ovens were kept going by actual prisoners of the camp. Thousands were dying and the Nazis needed an efficient way of getting rid of the remains. Once you were assigned to work in the crematorium, you weren't expected to live very long. These workers and even some SS guards were regularly assasinated so that word wouldn't spread to other parts of the camp what was happening in this building. At the very end when panic among the guards was rising due to the close proximity of the Allies, mass graves were dug near Dachau. The registered death count for Dachau is 31, 951, but there were thousands of deaths that went uncounted, like the mass graves and a train of prisoners from Birkenau.
Dachau was liberated on April 29, 1945 by American troops. We were at Dachau a little over a week after the 65th anniversary. Survivors and liberators return every year to commemorate the day. They are all very old and not as many are returning each year. Our guide said that she feels priveleged to have personally met some of these people and worries about in the future when guides will not have had that opportunity. During an interview with former prisoners, the question came up, "What made survival possible in such conditions?" The response was unanimous, two things: solidarity and unity among all of the prisoners regardless of their race, politics, religion, etc. and a strong hope that they would all escape one day and to be able to tell the world what had happened and to ensure that it would happen...
...NEVER AGAIN.
It is ESPECIALLY an insult to memorialize the handful of anti-societal trouble-seeking Jehovah's Witnesses alongside the SIX MILLION Jewish Holocaust victims given that Jehovah's Witnesses view the Jews much as did the Nazis.
ReplyDeleteThe WatchTower Cult teaches its own version of "replacement theology", which says that GOD rejected the Jews as His "chosen people", and replaced them with today's "Jehovah's Witnesses". In fact, the title "Jehovah's Witnesses" was originally applied to the Jews by the Prophet Isaiah, and is even quoted on the wall at the entrance to the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. The WatchTower Society, in calling its own members "Jehovah's Witnesses" is attempting to steal that designation away from the Jews. The WatchTower Cult even teaches that all of the Bible's promises of restoration for the Jewish people now belongs to the followers of the Cult.
There were only approximately 6000 Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany during the 1930s-40s. While many of those 6000 German JWs were repeatedly arrested during the 1930s and 1940s, only a fraction were jailed or imprisoned for any significant length of time. Only about 200-300 German JWs lost their lives, and the majority of those died from any number of causes other than having been executed. Approximately 1000 JWs from other European countries lost their lives while incarcerated by the Nazis.
During that same time period, there were more Jehovah's Witnesses arrested and jailed in the United States than in Germany. In fact, from 1941 until 1945, approximately 4500 American Jehovah's Witnesses "elected" to go to prison rather than serve in the U.S. Military and go fight against those same Nazis who were committing those atrocities. Approximately 3000 of those 4500 American JWs were even offered "conscientious objector" status, in which they were offered "non-combatant" work as a substitute, but 99% of those JWs refused to even help that much.