A dark story to tell

By Niki Thiessen

A wet mix of steady snow and rain and the gray low hanging clouds seemed right to visit Dachau, Nazi Germany’s first concentration camp, outside of Munich. The atrocities at Dachau stand as a reminder of how humanity can be swept up by charisma. While I expected to experience emotion, I never expected to learn lessons from a homeless drunk, the sound of gravel, and a cold howling wind.

Tour guides provide the best way to experience Dachau (for a tour guide see side bar). Dachau, the first and model camp for all concentration camps that followed, lies about 15 kilometers outside of Munich. It opened three months after Adolph Hitler became Germany’s Chancellor, as a work camp for his political adversaries.

As we waited for the bus to Dachau, our tour guide outlined what we would be seeing. While he was speaking a young man, wearing ragged clothing and no coat started harassing the tour guide. With extreme patience the guide stood there while the drunk rambled incoherently, breathing putrid breath down the guide’s neck. German police walked by without a sideways glance. Through the illogical mumbles we realized the man was trying to be arrested so he could have someplace warm to stay for the night. As I waited to visit Dachau, where 60 years ago people risked their lives to avoid imprisonment, this man wanted to go to jail.

When we arrived at the only concentration camp to operate for the entire 12 year span of the Third Reich, the somberness of the site enveloped me in a cloud of contemplation. “Arbeit Mact Frei” which means freedom through work, greeted me just as it did thousands of prisoners who entered Dachau’s imposing gates. The entire camp was set up as a mind game for the prisoners. “Smoking forbidden” was written on the walls, but prisoners didn’t have cigarettes. Prisoners were assigned bunk houses in a hierarchical fashion. German prisoners were always treated the best and Jewish prisoners had the least chance of survival. Bunk houses were bare and everything was and still is gray.

Even the gravel beneath my feet was a slate color. The scratching and crunching of my shoes made my imagination run wild. I asked our tour guide if the gravel had always been there. It had. Sixty years ago a young man or woman my age walked across this place, heard the same crunch and shuffle of stones underfoot, but that person had not voluntarily chosen to come to this place. Men like Edgar Kupfer, taken prisoner for being part of a vegetarian organization and mentioned multiple times on the tour, stood on the same gravel every morning for roll call. They stood there as a punishment for looking up, for missing a speck of dirt in the dormitories, or just because an SS guard felt the urge to punish someone.

A six-foot wide strip of grass surrounds the perimeter of the camp. It haunted me knowing that hundreds of prisoners were shot dead on the spot when they stepped onto the sweet, soft grass. Some were shot in the legs and taken to the infirmary where they were used as experiments by Dr. Rascher, the camp physician.

Standing in the middle of the desolate gravel lot I shivered. The cold air stung my nose and cheeks. Tears flooded my eyes, not from the cold, but from the embarrassment that I wanted to complain about the cold when I was so warmly dressed. Back then men and women would have to stand for up to 72 hours in the same weather with only a blue and white striped cotton shirt and pants suit.

As if on cue the wind howled and I imagined the cries of the thousands who suffered and died. They wailed for future generations that may never understand the atrocities of Nazi concentration camps. They lamented for the generations of unborn lost at Dachau. And they pleaded for education so that something like Dachau may never happen again.

No one knows how many people were killed there. Estimates range around 40,000 people, but these numbers do not include the hundreds that were sent to Dachau for “special treatment” or extermination on arrival. The SS did not keep records of those prisoners. The camp was liberated on April 29, 1945 by the U.S. army. Edgar Kupfer had survived along with more than 8,000 pages of a diary he secretly kept amongst Nazi files. His diary which is now housed at the University of Chicago Library provided useful insight to life at Dachau.

As I left Dachau that day I took with me the memory of a homeless man wanting to be jailed. With a warm bed and hot meal, he would have it so lucky compared to this place. I took the sound of gravel crunching under my feet. And I took the sound of voices past. From now on the sound of crunching gravel under my feet will remind me of those who cried at Dachau, begging me to tell their story.

Dachau Tours
The Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site Tours meet Tuesday to Sunday at 10:10 a.m. in front of the main entrance to the Hauptbahnhof (The main train station). Reservations are not necessary, but large groups should call in advance. The cost is 19 euro for adults, 15 euro for students and free for children under 14 when they are accompanied by an adult. All prices include transportation costs. All tours are in English and explore the rise of Nazism in Germany, the concentration camp system, prisoner life, death and survival, and usage of the site after 1945. For more information visit the website at http://www.dachautour.com/ or call +49 (089) 66064746.

Niki Thiessen, a journalism and communications double major at the University of Kansas, attended CIMBA during the spring of 2009.