Dachau, a concentration camp, was the first concentration camp made. Dachau was created because prisons had to many people that the government didn't like . They didn't have enough money to build more prisons like we do in our wars so the Nazis built work camps like Dachau. Dachau opened on March 22,1933. Dachau is located 8 miles outside the city of Munich, Germany. The camp was a training center for SS guards and the camps organization and routine became the model for all Nazi concentration camps. German citizens had little knowing of the harsh and bruttle things that had been happening inside the Concentration camp of Dachau.

In the early 1937's the SIS, using prisoner labor intimidated construction of a large complex buildings on the grounds of the original camp. Mass murders like Josef Kramer who began his SS concentration camp career at Dachau in 1935 graduated via Huswitz to become commandant of Bergen-Belsen Dr. Siegmund Rascher did gruesome medical experiments involving freezing people in cold water or air then trying to warm them up with hot water; this would allegedly help the German air force.

The number of Jewish prisoners at Dachau rose with the increased persecution of the Jews and on Nov10-11 1933in the afternoon of Kristallnacht more that 10,000 Jewish men were interned at Dachau. Between March 29,1933 200,000 prisoners passed through the Dachau camp and its branch camps

The survivors of the Holocaust are here to tell there story's and don't want everyone to forget the Holocaust. Javed Akhtar Remembers the day he arrived at Dachau  he says it was very cold even though is was the middle of July he remembers sweat running down his face but on the inside he was froze. Javed says that when he goes to heaven he will be able to tell everyone that he took a trip to  HELL. He says its not even anything you can imagine picture a prison then think of a prison that worked them one hundred times worse that's what it was like in the concentration camp of Dachau. I was like a walking skeleton I remember the longest I went with out food was about 15 days then I finally got a piece of bread from the German citizens outside the gate. " I will never forget my long hell like trip to Dachau."David Orlinoffspeakes out about Dachau, "I have pictures of Dachau in 1945, however my pictures show the rooms with blind stained walls where the SS threw starved men, women and children. I also have the blast furnaces where they cremated the bodies of people murdered by gas. The stack of the furnace is somewhat taller in 45, the building is the same. My photos are black and white  and were taken the day the camp was liberated.

- - Thomas m. Lewis - -  I got to encounter with a Dachau survivor.

Last summer, my girlfriend and I took a backpacking trip through Europe. After an Amazing two months bumming around Greece, Italy, Switzerland, France, Austria, and Prague, we finally  arrived in Munich. Our visit to Dacha was deeply disturbing but a valuable experience nonthingless. Our new friend Oskar (the Dachau survivor) had brought along photographs of the camp from 1945. The blood stained walls, the filthy bodies piled on top of each other, the heartless prison guards.... it was all too much. I have never felt such powerful emotion. I couldn't bring myself to Photographic copy of one of his photographs of the living quarters. This was the photograph that induced such intense and emotional response in ,me the previous day. The photograph is now in my album from that trip, and serves as a constant reminder of how things can get out of hand if the wrong people have power. I think Dachau should be a mandatory stop for anyone visiting Europe.

Also, when I was in Munich, I was sitting on a park bench having lunch with my girlfriend. An elderly German man on a bike stopped to rest on the bench. We started talking to him, and he told us stories about WWII. The most vivid memory he shared with us was about when the Jews would be hiding in their basements from the Gestapo. He would often walk around at night and discreetly give bread and water to the Jewish families. Any time that he would venture outside Germany, people would resent his presence, just because he was German.

Never Again.

Emily Catron

7th Social Studies

Rossville Jr. High

Holocaust Project

2004

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