Dachau-- Frozen in History

When we arrived at our post in Frankfurt, we sat down and had a family conversation about what places we wanted to see while we are here. We have a list of places in Germany and a list of places around Europe. Of of the places in Germany was Dachau. We have been to Dachau before but that was when the children was younger. They both had learned about WWII during the last year of school in Falls Church, so we wanted to bring them here to see the museum and monuments to the people who suffered here. 

It is a somber place. We have told others visiting, that you have to have something planned to do directly after so it is not so depressing for the entire day. They have done really well with the history of the place. They just tell it as it is, there is no hiding, no embellishing...they just give the details. 

It was a cold and foggy day, which added to the somber atmosphere. 

As you walk through the museum, they take you from the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party, to the atrocities. It did not start horrible at first, but by the time it was horrible all the powers to stop it had been taken away. Step by step hatred was groomed and taught until people were considered lower than human and treated that way. 

The door of the concentration camps all said Arbeit Macht Frei (Work makes you free). Many people never left the camps. Dachau was the first camp opened and was the only came to last the entire 12 years that the Nazis were in power. Other camps were patterned after Dachau--even though there were camps that were bloodier, Dachau was the place SS officers were trained and promoted. 

These were the crematorium ovens. They were used at the end of the era to dispose of large amounts of people without bringing it too much attention to the public. 

These photos are of the bunkers. There were rows and rows of them. At one point Dachau held 6000 prisoners at a time. Many were farmed out later in the war to work in factories as manual labor. 

A map of all the places that prisoners worked in the area. 

The gas chambers were people were systematically killed. Then bodies burned below. 

 I am glad that we were able to go and honor those who died and to learn about history so we can help not allow it to happen again. Most of all to remember what happens when we start to think one group of people is better than another.