Dachau

Hitler and WW2 are writ large in Bavaria. Hitler’s home country of Austria is a stone’s throw away and the Nazi party genesis was in Munich the capitol of Bavaria. From 1928 to 1933, the Nazi party went from 2% electoral support to 40% enough to form coalition government and propel Adolf Hitler to the chancellorship. Two months after his election Hitler established Dachau as a concentration camp to inter his political rivals and to establish and fine tune his SS as one of the most sadistic and brutal police operations known.

Over the years leading up to WW2 Dachau imprisoned not only political rivals but also of course Jews, criminals, gypsys, communists, homosexuals, prostitutes and diseased and infirmed.

It was a prison work camp where the inmates were expected to work as slave labour. Of course torture, maltreatment, malnourishment and abuse was de riguer. As the first of a network of such prisons the death rate was high but it was from punishment, abuse and maltreatment. This was not an extermination camp such as Auschwitz in Poland.

When the Americans arrived in April 1945 the spectre of emaciated survivors was distressing to the GIs but not as much as the piles of bodies stacked as if they were firewood! While not as confronting as my experiences in Rwanda and the Cambodian killing fields this still provokes reflections upon mankind’s inhumanity to fellow humans.
Dachau was destroyed at the request of survivors in 1965 only to be rebuilt as a memorial to the victims of Nazi Germany. It is now an autumn leafy tree lined shrine. The suffering of those thousands under Hitler is a quiet remembrance. We all dedicate a minute of silence to those who perished here.