Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site

"On March 22, 1933, a few weeks after Adolf Hitler had been appointed Reich Chancellor, a concentration camp for political prisoners was set up in Dachau. This camp served as a model for all later concentration camps and as a "school of violence" for the SS men under whose command it stood. In the twelve years of its existence over 200.000 persons from all over Europe were imprisoned here and in the numerous subsidary camps. 41.500 were murdered. On April 29 1945, American troops liberated the survivors." (http://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/index-e.html)

Where roll call took place every morning rain or shine, whether one could stand or not.

The main gate at Dachau where prisoners walked through marked with the sentence Arbeit macht frei meaning  "Work sets  you free."

The layout of the grounds.

Where the buildings that housed the prisoners were.

1940s

Jewish Memorial

Jewish Memorial.

Each of the four furnaces in this room could cremate two or three corpses at a time.

Prisoners were told to get ready to take a shower, but were instead led into the next room: a gas chamber.

The old crematorium was built in the summer of 1940, after the foreign prisoners arrived and the mortality rate greatly increased. A year later it was already working beyond capacity. The crematorium was in operation until about April 1943. During this period approximately 11,000 prisoners were cremated here.