Dachau: Heinous Crimes Of The Holocaust

Dachau During the Second World War, there were many heinous crimes committed. These unforgivable acts are still felt today among the survivors. The war started in 1939, however these crimes originated from as early as 1933. This is the starting point of terrible sequences of events that is known today as the Holocaust. Beginning with what is arguably one of the most notorious concentration camps of the Holocaust, Dachau. Dachau is one of the first concentration camps established by the Nazis. It was also the longest operating camp. In March of 1933, shortly after Adolf Hitler had been appointed to Reich Chancellor, the Germans began surveying an abandoned gunpowder and munitions factory. Within a couple of weeks they had this old site transformed
into a site to hold political prisoners. It was large enough to hold up to five thousand prisoners. On the day the camp opened, they had transferred two hundred inmate from Stadelheim Prison. Many more people were sent here over the years to come. The year 1935 saw the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws. These laws regularized racial discrimination in Nazi Germany. It was after that they began broadening the types of people that they imprisoned there. People were arrested and sentenced there for being Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and those that tried to emigrate. These people were then ordered to hand over their possession. This had included their clothes off of their backs, money, and jewelry they had. On the front gate of the camp, the prisoners would read the words “Arbeit macht frei.” These words translate into “Work will make you free.” The Nazis try to give them the appearance that this was just a work camp to rehabilitate them when it was actually a form of torture. They originally had the inmates there to work in the munitions factory. Also the people were used to expand the camp so that more people could be placed there to work. Near the start of 1937, they had begun an expansion of the camp. The prisoners were ordered to begin working on a large complex to increase the capacity of the camp. This new expansion over doubled to current capacity. It added room for six thousand prisoners increasing the amount the camp could hold to eleven thousand people. The construction was completed mid-way through 1938. During that year Austria and Sudetenland were annexed. The Nazis then began sending over eleven thousand German and Austrian Jews to the camp.