Dachau

Thursday we drove to Munich and to Dachau.  We went to see the concentration camp.

Entrance to concentration camp

Map of camp

I expected we'd spend a few hours there and then maybe see some of Munich.  We spent about 5 hours there.  It was very sobering.  The museum traced the rise of Hitler and his party and the erosion of freedoms of the people.

I had not realized that after WWI Germany had a democratic party with many freedoms-- the freedom to speak, to own property and not have it taken from you, the right to vote, the lack of discrimination based on race and religion.

With a series of rulings it was all swept away.

I also didn't realized that Hitler targeted so many groups.  He went after anyone who disagreed with him politically and put them into concentration camps.  He went after the priests and religious people who protested against him. He winnowed out his own followers and incarcerated any who might be weak.  He exterminated the infirm, the handicapped, the imperfect.  Then, of course, he went after Jews, and anyone non German.

As Germany went to war, they spread the program of extermination to the Jews and priests in the conquered nations.  And in Russia, they planned extermination so the new German Rich could spread into those lands.  Men, women and children were killed or hauled back to be slaves for the Third Reich and shoved into concentration camps.  Many Russian POW's were shot or killed in other ways.

The incredible brutality was mindboggling. Beatings, tortures, working to death, scientific experiments. And in the town of Dachau?  People said they didn't know what was going on.

How could that be?  I think it's because it was easier to believe a lie.  It's more comfortable.  If you believe the truth, then you must do something.  And that's dangerous.  It might put YOU in a concentration camp.

 

 Memorial. You can't see it clearly, but it shows skeletal people throwing themselves into the electrified barbed wire fence to kill themselves after they could no longer stand it.

 The camp was intended for 6,000 but grew to 32,000.  They were crammed into these rooms, but still expected to keep them spotless.

 Crematorium where the dead were burned.  They had a gas chamber, but it was never fully used.  Still, bodies were piled high in the two side rooms when the allied forces arrived.

 

I worry about our eroding freedoms.   I just read that the United States is now # 46 on the list of free countries just ahead of Haiti and behind Romania.  Where have our freedoms gone?  Since when have we allowed our freedoms to be slowly eroded and taken from us?  Why have we chosen safety and security-- government protection-- instead of freedom.