Dachau visit

The gate says Work makes you free
The gate says Work makes you free

There is a detailed museum. One can see photos and read names and  synopses of individual prisoners — Jewish, Polish, some Spanish civil war fighters who then fought in Germany, Czechs, Hungarians, the nameless Russian prisoners of war. priests, Jehovah’s witnesses. Men were imprisoned there, not women. Eventually thousands upon thousands of prisoners of both sexes, all nationalities including Dutch, were sent into factories to work as slaves — BMW and Agfa included, also Zeppelin.  FInally the liberation  came on April 29-May 1, 1945. Upon entry Americans documented the scene by taking color motion pictures, and later forced the townspeople to walk through the camp. Most of the barracks are gone, just rectangles in the ground now. Ten meters x 100 meters. In orderly rows. Built originally to hold 6,000 but at the end held so many more that I can’t remember the scale. Diabolical, recent and bitter

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