The Dachau Concentration Camp Opens
March 10th, 1933
(Note: the picture is AI generated, but the research and writing was carried out by a human, me)
Today 91 years ago, the first permanent concentration camp under the National Socialist Regime opened in Dachau, a district town northwest of Munich. Opened by Heinrich Himmler only a few weeks after the Nazis came to power, its initial purpose was to hold and intimidate political opponents. It was subsequently expanded, and its purpose came to encompass use as a training site and as a “Vorzeigelager”, a “show camp” for the purposes of propaganda. With the start of World War II, it became primarily a concentration camp for jews and prisoners from Nazi-occupied regions.
The Dachau concentration camp has several ugly firsts: it was not only the first (and longest-operating) permanent Nazi concentration camp, but also the first in which the commander was granted absolute power over the inmates, creating a “state within a state” and permitting a number of atrocities which would escape any kind of oversight. It was also the first camp to utilize the infamous slogan “Arbeit macht frei”; attached subsequently to the entrances of many other concentration camps, it was a cynical perversion of an idea originally due to the Danish Philosopher Kierkegaard that work is an authentic expression of freedom. As in many other instances in which fascists change the meaning of a word to its opposite, “freedom” here actually meant “death”.
The Dachau concentration camp was liberated in April 1945 by American troops who were completely unprepared for the horrifying sights of death and suffering that awaited them. Out of at least 200,000 inmates, it is estimated that 41,500 died. One of the most remarkable inmates of Dachau was the psychiatrist Victor Frankl (who was also in Auschwitz), whose book “Man’s Search for Meaning”, is not just a harrowing account of his experiences, but more importantly, a powerful guide on how to find meaning in life even in the face of overwhelming despair and existential danger.
