Dachau Concentration Camp - 12 years of horror

In early 1933, power came to power in GermanyNational Socialists. In October, after the burning of the Reichstag, Hitler received special powers and began decisive actions to establish the order he had conceived in the country.

The Dachau Concentration Camp was the first institutionmass re-education of the population, for the beginning of German. The place was chosen in Bavaria, near Munich, almost in the suburbs (just 17 km), at the site of an abandoned factory.

The Social Democrats and the Communists, who have not been able todue to various reasons to create a parliamentary coalition, formed the basis of a special contingent. In addition to them, homosexuals, prostitutes, criminals and all those whom the Nazi leadership considered as antisocial elements pleased homesteads. In all, the first race consisted of five thousand people. At the same time, a mocking slogan appeared on the gate: "Labor makes it free".

In the first years the concentration camp of Dachau really becameplace of "reforging". Former Communists and Social Democrats, after working for several months in the open air with a strict diet, often expressed sympathy for National Socialism. Such released and provided an opportunity to prove loyalty in deed.

In 1934 it was found out that much more is required for the camps. The Dachau Concentration Camp became the forge of personnel for the staff of the penitentiary system of the entire Reich.

Then, after the all-German pogrom, which received the poetic name "the crystal night", seriously took up the Jewish population. The first ten thousand were brought here in the 38th.

With the outbreak of World War II expandednational composition of prisoners. All over Germany and beyond (in the occupied territories), new institutions were created that were no longer intended for re-education. People were brought here to kill.

The Dachau Concentration Camp has become a place of applicationindustrial methods of killing "human material". Everything that could be of value to the military economy was disposed of - dental crowns, hair, clothes, ashes, remaining from the burned bodies. But this is not all - prisoners were used to conduct experiments to study the borderline regimes of the organism within the survival and beyond them. For this purpose, the prisoners were subjected to hypothermia, they were tested with poisonous substances and protective equipment, they were given deadly injections of toxins. In quarantine blocks, observations were made of contaminated phlegmon. Butchers from the SS cut people, fixing their death agony.

At the end of April 1945, to the environs of MunichApproached the units of the Seventh American Army. On their way was Dachau (concentration camp). Photos made by American soldiers immediately after the release of prisoners, recorded mountains of corpses, skeletons, skin-tight. The guards preferred to surrender without a fight. Then came what no one expected. The SS men were taken to the fence and shot without exception. This mass execution was not even a revenge - American soldiers simply killed non-humans as rabid, bloodthirsty animals.

In the post-war years, much has been done,To commemorate the victims of Dachau. Concentration camp-museum, however, in the opinion of surviving prisoners, does not give a complete picture of the real atmosphere of the "factory of death." The blocks are neatly repaired, plastered and whitewashed, inside - cleanliness and order. Only cold crematorium furnaces and mocking iron letters above the entrance remind us of the horrors of the twelve years of Nazi rule and two hundred thousand people turned here into ashes and yellowish smoke.