The Holocaust is portrayed in various ways to help others comprehend and appreciate the extreme atrocities that occurred. One such Holocaust portrayal is the Dachau concentration camp. The history of Dachau contains a beginning, middle, and end, much like stories today. The beginning: the establishment, the middle: the atrocities committed there, and the end: the liberation and freedom. However, the history of Dachau is much more than a story. It's a lesson for all humanity.
Dachau was the first concentration camp to be instituted and was established on March 20, 1933. It is located in the southern German town of Dachau and is about ten miles northwest of Munich (Goss 2014). Two days after the opening of the camp, the first prisoners arrived; the majority of whom were political opponents of the Third Reich, Nazi Germany. Dachau’s first commandant was SS official Hilmar Waekerle. He was later replaced in June when he was convicted of murdering a prisoner. On May 25, 1933, Hitler exempted him and all other criminal activities that took place in concentration camps; he said it was out of the jurisdiction of the law (Timeline of Dachau 2014). Even though Hilmar’s conviction was overturned, a new leader was designated, Theodor Eicke. He would be the one to convert this camp into the model of what other concentration camps should resemble. Before the camp was liberated, nine other commandants would also take on this role (Goss 2014).At the end of the first year of the camp, there was an estimated 4,800 prisoners present in the camp.
On August 15, 1938, the Dachau camp expansion was completed as a result of the grueling work of the prisoners (Timeline of Dachau 2014). Not long after, on a night called Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glas...
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...re were 67,655 registered inmates. The majority of who were political opponents (43,350) and Jews (22,100). On that same day, the SS forced 7,000 prisoners, consisting mainly of Jews, to walk from Dachau to Tegernsee, Germany. On this death march, the SS shot anyone who couldn’t keep up and yet still many others died resulting from the cold, hunger, and exhaustion of the six-day-trip. During this time on April 29, 1945, Dachau was liberated by the 7th Army of the United States armed forces (Dachau The First Concentration Camp 2014). When the soldiers arrived, they found more than 30 boxcars filled with decomposing corpses. Three days later on May 2, 1945, the remaining prisoners who survived the death march were liberated by American forces. Roughly more than 188,000 people had been imprisoned at Dachau and nearly 50,000 of them met their end their also (Goss 2014).
The notorious detention camp, Bergen-Belsen, was constructed in 1940 and “was near Hanover in northwest Germany, located between the villages Bergen and Belsen” (jewishvirtuallibrary.org), hence the name. Originally, the “camp was designed to hold 10,000 prisoners” (jewishvirtuallibrary.org) but, Bergen-Belsen rapidly grew. “In the first eighteen months of existence, there were already five satellite camps.” (holocaustresearchproject.org). Eventually, the “camp had eight sections: detention camp, two camps for women, a special camp, neutrals camp, ‘star camp’, Hungarian Camp, and a tent camp.” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, p.165) It also held prisoners who were too ill/weak to work at the “convalescent camp” (Bauer, Yehuda, p.359)
The Holocaust will forever be known as one of the largest genocides ever recorded in history. 11 million perished, and 6 million of the departed were Jewish. The concentration camps where the prisoners were held were considered to be the closest one could get to a living hell. There is no surprise that the men, women, and children there were afraid. One is considered blessed to have a family member alongside oneself.
The Holocaust was a very impressionable period of time. It not only got media attention during that time, but movies, books, websites, and other forms of media still remember the Holocaust. In Richard Brietman’s article, “Lasting Effects of the Holocaust,” he reviews two books and one movie that were created to reflect the Holocaust (BREITMAN 11). He notes that the two books are very realistic and give historical facts and references to display the evils that were happening in concentration camps during the Holocaust. This shows that the atrocities that were committed during the Holocaust have not been forgotten. Through historical writings and records, the harshness and evil that created the Holocaust will live through centuries, so that it may not be repeated again (BREITMAN 14).
The inmates usually lived in overcrowded barracks and slept in bunk “beds”. In the forced labour camps, for instance, the inmates usually worked 12 hours a day with hard physical work, clothed in rags, eating too little and always living under the risk of corporal punishment” (Holocaust | Concentration Camps). Only 7,000 emaciated survivors of a Nazi extermination process that killed an estimated six million Jews were found at Auschwitz” (Rice, Earle). Most of these deaths occurred towards the end of the war; however, there were still a lot of lives that had been miraculously spared. “According to SS reports, there were more than 700,000 prisoners left in the camps in January 1945.
On April 27, 1940, the head of the SS and German police, Heinrich Himmler, ordered that a new concentration camp be established near the town of Oswiecim. A short while later the building of the camp in Zasole, the suburb of Oswiecim, was started. The camp was to be called Auschwitz. The first laborers forced to work on the construction of the camp were three hundred Jews from Oswiecim and its vicinity. (Encyclopedia of the Holocaust) After the completion it covered two square kilometers and took approximately one and a half hours to walk around its perimeter. (Feig, 340) On the gate of Auschwitz was a sign in German that read, “Arbeit macht frei,” which translates into English as “work makes one free.” (Feig, 334) This was one of the many lies which the Nazis told their prisoners. The first Jews in Auschwitz believed that they were just being taken there to work for the Nazis. As more and more people died word leaked to the outside world about what was really happening at Auschwitz.
As early as age thirteen, we start learning about the Holocaust in classrooms and in textbooks. We learn that in the 1940s, the German Nazi party (led by Adolph Hitler) intentionally performed a mass genocide in order to try to breed a perfect population of human beings. Jews were the first peoples to be put into ghettos and eventually sent by train to concentration camps like Auschwitz and Buchenwald. At these places, each person was separated from their families and given a number. In essence, these people were no longer people at all; they were machines. An estimation of six million deaths resulting from the Holocaust has been recorded and is mourned by descendants of these people every day. There are, however, some individuals who claim that this horrific event never took place.
The first concentration camps were set up in 1933. Hitler established the camps when he came into power for the purpose of isolating, punishing, torturing, and killing anyone suspected of opposition against his regime. In the early years of Hitler's reign, concentration camps were places that held people in protective custody. These people in protective custody included those who were both physically and mentally ill, gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses, Jews and anyone against the Nazi regime. By the end of 1933 there were at least fifty concentration camps throughout occupied Europe.
Soon after Germany separated from Austria in March 1938, the Nazi soldiers arrested and imprisoned Jews in concentration camps all over Germany. Only eight months after annexation, the violent anti-jew Kristallnacht , also known as Night of the Broken Glass, pogroms took place. The Nazi soldiers arrested masses of male adult Jews and held them captive in camps for short periods of time. A death camp is a concentration camp designed with the intention of mass murder, using strategies such as gas chambers. Six death concentration camps exis...
Rost, Nico, Concentration Camp Dachau, third edition, translated into English by Captain Bernard R. Hanauer (no date) Comité International de Dachau, Brussels, p. 4.
Hoess attested to his continuous association with the administration of several concentrations camps since 1934, being appointed Commandant of Auschwitz on May 1, 1940 and remaining in that position until December 1, 1943. Hoess testifies that he was ordered to “establish extermination facilities at ...
Hitler became chancellor of Germany and he did not like the Jewish people so he made death camps or most commonly known as concentration camps and him and his followers killed about 5,860,129 Jewish people.The Jewish people thrived at a population of approximately 9,796,840 million before the Holocaust. After the Holocaust there about 3,936,711 left. It was a terrible time for the Jewish people.Most people were killed in death camps or concentration camps.The camps were Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, etc. There was also Einsatzgruppe a mobile killing squads that when around and murdered Jewish people. The prisoners in concentration camps were jews, gypsies, socialists, and homosexuals. There were 20,000 of these camps built and used during the holocaust. When Hitler became chancellor and the Nazis became in charge the Sturmabteilung ,Schutzstaffel , police, and local authorities built these camps so they could incarcerate opponents. The Schutzstaffel established bigger camps in Berlin, Munich, and Saxony. In 1934 the Schutzstaffel was the only organization that could establish and manage these concentration camps. Lichtenburg was an all female camp only.
In conclusion the Holocaust was a horrible thing. It created a world war that could only be stopped by someone winning. The Jews and other prisoners got caught in the crossfire of this world war. The Jewish people and many other prisoners that were in the camps face starvation, selection, transport, and many other
During the rule of Adolf Hitler, many children who were Jewish lived a very frightening and difficult life. They never were given the love and compassion that every child needs and deserves growing up. The Holocaust is a story that will continue to be shared till the end of time.
World War II was a grave event in the twentieth century that affected millions. Two main concepts World War II is remembered for are the concentration camps and the marches. These marches and camps were deadly to many yet powerful to others. However, to most citizens near camps or marches, they were insignificant and often ignored. In The Book Thief, author Markus Zusak introduces marches and camps similar to Dachau to demonstrate how citizens of nearby communities were oblivious to the suffering in those camps during the Holocaust.
Auschwitz I was built in 1940, as a site for Polish political prisoners. This was the original camp and administrative center. The prisoners’ living conditions were inhumane in every respect, and the death rate was quite high. Auschwitz I was not meant ...