Munich Weekend Part 3a

Dachau


Saturday morning I got up and went to Dachau. The Dachau concentration camp is located about 30 minutes outside the city center. You can get a Munich XXL ticket which will cover you for any and all U bahn and S bahn for the day, as well as buses and trams. Once you're there it's free to get in, 50 cents for a map/brochure.
It's not an overly crowded sort of place, although there are plenty of tour groups (which you know annoy the daylights out of me because they're so difficult to get around and they're always standing in front of some sign you want to read).

Dachau was one of the earliest concentration camps and one of only a handful to run throughout all 12 years. It was also the model for many other concentration camps, not only in set up, but also in "management style". SS soldiers were trained there and then sent to other concentration camps to teach the other SS soldiers the "Dachau spirit" or how to properly brutalize, humiliate, and torture the prisoners. This wasn't an "extermination camp" per se, but that's not to say people didn't die here or that there weren't murders. Dachau was more a hub for sending prisoners to other camps, especially in the later years. Those who were fit to work were sent on to be slave labor; those who were not were either retained in Dachau or sent to an extermination camp. Dachau did have a gas chamber built but it was never used. Capital punishment in Dachau was usually in the form of shooting or hanging. The hanging took place in the crematorium, right in front of the incinerators. Originally there was just one incinerator for burning the bodies of those who were murdered, committed suicide, or died of illness, malnutrition, or sheer exhaustion. The number dying grew to the point that they built a larger crematorium just outside the walls of the camp with five incinerators and two large rooms for holding the bodies. A shortage of coal forced them to switch to mass graves towards the end of the war. This was also one of the first places were medical experiments were performed on prisoners.

Contrary to pop culture, the concentration camp prisoners were not just Jewish. Dachau was only one third Jewish, with the rest being anyone from political opponents, royalty, gays, physically/mentally disabled people,  Italians, Polish people, east europian minority groups, and even clergy. At one point there were over 2000 members of the clergy imprisoned there. Anyone who spoke out against the Nazis or the SS would also have been part of the group.

I have to admit, I cried. I cried through the museum, I cried in the bunk house, and I cried at the crematorium. At one point I had to sit down on a bench and just cry for a bit. It's terrible. Knowing the depravity that went on here. The torture these people were subjected to. The blind brutality. The total utter lack of humanity. When the American soldiers came to liberate the camp, they couldn't believe it. They were in shock that this could ever happen. The prisoners were out there cheering and the Americans just stood there staring because they didn't know what to do or to say. They thought it was just a camp for prisoners of war; they didn't know how bad it was. People have done some really cruel things to each other of the course of history. The hells we have created are shocking, but this has got to go near the top.

How could this happen? The German people were in a hell of their own following the first world war. They were angry, humiliated, scared, frustrated, and jealous, and these are strong emotions. Throw in a devastating economic depression, a shaky new government, a demeaning military defeat, and a widespread fear of the modern world and you've got a recipe for disaster. Fear is probably the key here. Fear destroys people, and they were afraid. Afraid that the world they knew was never coming back. Afraid of people who didn't want that world back. Afraid of changes that wouldn't put them at the top of the ladder anymore. Afraid of a world where people have different beliefs, lifestyles, and goals, that don't necessarily coincide with their own. So when someone stood up and pointed a finger at a culprit, at a scapegoat, people were ready and willing to follow.

Don't think this couldn't happen here too. The US walked down that road too. After Pearl Harbor the US government started forcing Japanese Americans, many of them US citizens, to come to internment camps to prevent them from spying. Although far fewer people were affected, the conditions were not nearly as depraved, and there were no mass murders, we walked that same road. We imprisoned perfectly innocent people without trial and held them responsible for a tragedy they had no part of. Luckily we stopped before things got any worse.

What if today the US government announced a new plan for dealing with illegal immigration? What if they proposed to gather up illegal immigrants and instead of deporting them, sent them to "Fair Deal Facilities" where they could work off their tax debt and work towards becoming a legal American citizen? What if political opponents to the idea suddenly disappeared, supposedly to work on a special project in a secret location? What if after the illegal immigrants, the government started clearing out the ghettos of major cities, saying that they were altering the welfare program to include skill training in the Facilities? What if news reporters got to tour the new immaculately clean Facilities, and you could see what good conditions there were, and how happy the people seemed? What if the newspapers had interviews with former drug dealers saying how they were better off there than at home? What if well-known scientists published studies on the effectiveness of such programs at imbuing a sense of responsibility and good work ethic? Would anyone really try to stop it? How many Americans would really find fault with such a program? After all, it's not like they're taking "good" people. It's just the lazy freeloaders and bums who are lucky to not be in jail. It's not like they're being treated badly. Look, that room's clean as a whistle. This is good for them. We'll be a better country for it.

Have caution, because we could do it too. We are just as capable as they. Let's hope that the memorial sites like Dachau have made us a little wiser. "Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth" ~FDR, 1939