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Dachau was the first Nazi concentration camp, built in March 1933. Jews, political prisoners, fags, and others deemed 'undesirable' by the Third Reich were imprisoned here. More than 200,000 people were sent here, and more than 30,000 died or were killed. We did a guided tour through the camp, and although I'm glad we did, it really is a horrible place given its history. We were told some extremely horrific and disgusting stories about this place during Nazi control, and saw it for ourselves in the onsite museum.

On the main gate, "Arbeit macht frei", roughly translates to "Freedom through work", and should be well known to anybody who has studied the Nazi movement.		As more and more people were sent here as the war went on, the camp was quickly bulging beyond capacity, and people were jammed into barracks like sardines in a can and had to sleep wherever they could find space.

No doubt the queues for the dunnies were terrible!		The barracks have since been demolished (and one reconstructed) but the foundations were left for relatives to come and pay their respects. The foundations are numbered and there are records of who was in each barrack.		Prisoners crammed in the barracks.

The courtyard in front of the barracks looking towards the museum.

Prisoners in the courtyard for roll call.		Behind the museum is a long building where prisoners were held if they were to be disciplined for whatever reason. Even SS guards working in the camp were kept in here if they broke protocol in some way and required a little disciplining!

The grassed area bordering the camp was strictly off limits to prisoners, and violators were shot on the spot from the watchtower above. On occasion, drunken guards would remove a prisoner's hat, throw it on the grass, and order him to retrieve it, essentially sentencing him to death right then and there. It was also common for prisoners to commit suicide by running across the grass into the electric fences shown here on the right.		Simply put, this is a hall of death. Note the chimney on the roof - this is for the cremation ovens pictured below.
This is a gas chamber that was never actually used for some reason. It is disguised as a showering area, and (had it been utilised like it was in other Nazi concentration camps) prisoners would be told it was exactly that. Once inside, however, the prisoners would be locked in, and the gas would come through the two vents on the far wall. Once dead, the bodies would be cremated in the room next door...		...in these bad boys. These are the original cremation ovens. It got to the point where it couldn't keep up with demand (even without the use of the gas chamber), so four more were built around the corner!
This is one of two memorials behind the building housing the gas chamber and ovens. A commemorative mass grave dedicated to the unknown dead at Dachau.		This is a memorial site erected in the camp in 1997. It represents prisoners running into the electric fence as explained above. On April 29, 1945, the Yanks stormed the place and the camp was freed. It was used for many years thereafter as a residence for refugees, and today is primarily a memorial site although there is a working church on site.

More photos of Dachau Concentration Camp as it stands today can be found here.

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