Martha Gellhorn writes a chilling account of life in Dachau, the original German concentration camp. She visited Dachau as it was liberated by a psychological state of the prisoners themselves. She converses with them and recounts the horror to which they were subjected. Despite most readers varying degree of familiarity with the truth of what occurred within the Nazi's numerous concentration camps, one cannot help but be moved by Gellhorn's words as we struggle, once again, to comprehend man's capacity for such heinous atrocities. .
Gellhorn begins by setting a scene in which she shares a plane with American prisoners of war immediately after being liberated from Dachau. She builds anticipation with dialogue of the soldiers' concern that no one will believe them and their insistence that they must talk about it. Gellhorn must also wonder how best to write the unimaginable to an audience that may not desire to be enlightened to it. She creates a buffer for her audience by not directly referring to the prisoners as people per se' but as "skeletons" with "no age and no faces". In so doing, Gellhorn provides the reader some emotional distance from the individuals she writes of. This kindness, however, is not strong enough to render us desensitized as their terrible tales unfold. .
When Gellhorn does include testimony from a specific prisoner, she impersonally names them 'Polish doctor' or 'colleague' or 'surgeon'. She eerily conveys their emotional detachment, irony even, that they have adopted in this environment by quoting, "The Germans here made some unusual experiments". When someone is talking about killing thousands of people in the interests of scientific curiosity, some of which served to advance science no further at all, 'Unusual' is a massive under-statement. .
As Gellhorn's account guides her audience through the compound she momentarily relents her objectivity and expresses her distaste with the words "In Dachau, if you want to rest from one horror, you go and see another".
This was later simply known as Dachau Concentration Camp. This camp was located in a small town called Dachau and about 10 miles from Munich, Germany. ... Dachau Concentration Camp had a distinct and prompt schedule created by Theodore Eicke. ... With this, Dachau was a camp overflowing with different cultures (Horwitz 46-47). Slave and Labor in the Dachau Concentration Camp greatly differed from one project to another. ...
ARBEIT MACHT FREI "Arbeit macht frei" says the sign posted over the gate of the main entrance of the concentration camp in Dachau, Germany. ... The whole camp is enclosed with high barbwire fencing, which has a threatened effect. ... The Nazis murdered 32,000 prisoners in Dachau and six million altogether since 1933. ... Even children were brought into those concentration camps. ... You would like to cry for the thousands, who lost their life in Dachau. ...
End of May 1938, Oswald Pohl inspected the site for a second time with a view to setting up the concentration camp there. ... On the hill overlooking the "Wiener Graben", construction began on the main camp, requiring tons of granite for its stone buildings and walls. The first prisoners, 300 Austrians and Germans came to Mauthausen on August 8, 1938 from the Dachau concentration camp, accompanied by 80 members of the SS "Death's-Head Detachment". Additional prisoners from Dachau arrived on October 5 and 18, 1938. Arrival at the camp was a shock for every prisoner: Disinfection, regis...
They Became Desperate Perhaps some of the most vivid images of the Holocaust are the death marches, when tens of thousands of Jews at one time were paraded to the concentration camps in Germany, Poland and Austria. Some of the more notable death marches included the mass march from the Warsaw Ghetto to the camp at Auschwitz and the march from Dachau to Tegernsee towards the end of the war. ... Over 500,000 Hungarian Jews, for example, were exterminated in the midst of Hitler's plan, many of which were transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps for extermination. ... For examp...
Concentration camps were Nazi-sponsored prison camps in which political opponents and members of minority groups were confined. Among these camps the most famous were Buchenwald, Dachau, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. ... U.S. troops arrived at the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps and rescued the prisoners. British troops liberated those being held at Bergen-Belsen. On entering one of the camps, General Dwight D. ...
Concentration camps are essentially penal camps and were first created to confine selected groups of people, usually for political reasons. ... Some of the German people must have been aware to an extent of what was performed in the camps, yet most had little or no knowledge about the camps. At times the Concentration camps were called "corrective labour camps", "relocation centres" and "reception centres". ... The first Concentration camp was established at Dachau on March 23, 1933. Dachau became the training ground for the SS. ...
INTRODUCTION Did you know that six million people were murdered in death camps called concentration camps? ... Germany, under Hitler's control started to build concentration camps like Auschwitz and Dachau. ... CONCENTRATION CAMPS In March 1933 in Dachau Germany the first permanent concentration camp was built. The people who were in these camps were Jews, homosexuals, priests, and gypsies. ... When they finally arrived to the camps they were sent into different directions. ...
A year and a half later when the camp was liberated he was arrested, tried by the British court and executed by hanging for his crimes against the defenseless prisoners of Bergen Belsen. ... A detention camp, two women's camps, a neutral camp, a "star" camp ( mainly Dutch prisoners who wore a Star of David on their clothing instead of prison uniforms), a Hungarian camp, a tent camp and a store for clothes. ... When the camp was liberated Fania weighed a minute sixty-five pounds. ... Conclusion On April 15th 1945 Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp was liberated by the British. It ...
