Nothing prepares one for a tour of the first Nazi concentration camp, in which 40,000 people died in twelve years even though it was a 'concentration camp' and not an 'extermination camp."
An iron gate proclaims "Work Makes You Free".
Desperate prisoners would sometimes run and launch themselves into the electrified fence to bring their suffering to an end. To prevent this, the Nazis dug a trench to separate the fence from the compound. Prisoners were too weak to crawl out and were typically attacked by guard dogs. They were usually allowed to live, however, and tortured as an example of to other prisoners.
Entrance to the complex.
Bunk beds which, at the height of the horror, gave each man one square yard of space.
The larger crematorium building was built to replace the smaller one, below. The gallows was positioned in front of the crematoriums.
Below, a statute representing the common man at Dachau. Note the oversize clothes, as prisoners were emaciated due to woefully deficient food and health care.
The top memorial reads "Never Again" and the bottom is a gripping depiction of prisoners arrayed against the steel fence. When the Allies liberated Dachau in 1945, they found stacks of bodies as the Nazis had run out of coal for the crematorium. Local townspeople were compelled to tour the camp and witness the atrocities, and then help bury the bodies. The question: "How could they not have known?"
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