Exhibits in the Dachau Museum
Most Museums will not allow photographs to be taken, especially
not with the use of flash, but this is not the policy at the
Dachau Museum. Unlike Holocaust Museums in America, there is
no X-ray machine at the entrance, and no uniformed guards look
through purses and backpacks. Cameras do not have to be surrendered
at the door. I looked around the Dachau museum very thoroughly
to see if there were any Verboten signs, but there were none,
so I proceeded to take the photographs that you see below.
The first photograph shows a huge blowup of a picture that
hangs in the Dachau Museum, although it was taken at the Buchenwald
concentration camp. As you can see, there is a forest in the
background which identifies the surroundings as those of the
Buchenwald camp. The photograph shows a cruel and inhuman punishment
which the Buchenwald Museum says was devised by the SS guard
at Buchenwald who is shown in the picture. Prisoners were hung
by their arms from a tree for an hour or more. According to the
Dachau Museum, this punishment was also used at the Dachau concentration
camp. Prisoners were hung on poles erected in the courtyard between
the service building and the bunker.
Prisoners punished by hanging from a tree by the
arms
The photograph below shows a display about Heinrich Himmler,
the man who started it all. Himmler was the 32-year-old Chief
of Police in Munich when he announced on March 20, 1933 that
a concentration camp would be opened in the abandoned gun powder
and munitions factory in the eastern section of Dachau. What
looks like a toupee that doesn't quite cover his bald head is
really a popular haircut of that time: the sides and back were
shaved with only a section on the top left. His Hitler-style
moustache was also popular among the Nazis. This style was adopted
after World War I when German men shaved off the ends of their
handlebar moustaches after Kaiser Wilhelm II, who wore this popular
style, was forced to abdicate.
Photo of Heinrich Himmler is on display in Museum
The exhibits in the Dachau Museum are mainly photographs with
very few artifacts from the former camp. There is a blue and
gray striped uniform and a pair of wooden shoes on display but
almost nothing else. In the Dachau Museum, you won't see any
glass cases full of hair or open cans of Zyklon B with the gas
pellets spilling out. One reason for the almost total lack of
artifacts is that the camp was in use, until the late 1950ies,
as a refugee camp for 5,000 homeless Germans who were evicted
from Poland, Czechoslovakia and eastern Germany after the war.
By the time the former concentration camp was turned into a Memorial
Site, all the things used by the former inmates were long gone.
If you want to see Nazi memorabilia, try the Museum of Tolerance
at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. You won't see
any of that here, since all things Nazi were banned in Germany
after the war. There is nothing in the Museum about the SS training
center and garrison which made up 3/4 of the original Dachau
complex. This Museum is all about the victims in the camp, not
the perpetrators. A sign in the lobby says that the displays
are not appropriate for children under 12 years of age, but this
is not a horror museum. Most of the visitors are high school
kids.
After the Russians liberated the Majdanek camp near Lublin,
Poland in July 1944, they set up the first concentration camp
museum there a month later. This set a precedent for the Allied
liberators to use the concentration camps for educational purposes.
The Russians were anxious to convert the Poles to Communism by
showing them the evils of Fascism. When Dachau was liberated
by the Americans, they immediately began educating American soldiers
about why they were fighting the Germans. The first museum at
Dachau was set up by the American Army in the crematorium building
where the gas chambers are located. A sign near the crematorium
informed the soldiers that 238,00 persons had been cremated there,
more than the number of registered inmates. These exhibits remained
until 1953, but they educated at least 100,000 soldiers who were
brought here to be witnesses to the Nazi atrocities.
The photograph below shows the desk that was used to hold
the camp records, one of the very few artifacts on display in
the Museum. In the background is a large poster which shows the
colors of the badges worn by the prisoners. However, most of
the the photographs on display show the prisoners wearing uniforms
without badges. None of the photographs show Dachau prisoners
wearing wooden shoes like the pair that is on display.
Desk used to hold prisoner records at Dachau
The Museum includes a book store which is in front of the
movie theater. I was surprised to see many books there which
had translations in every language - except English. The theater
is quite large, but it fills up fast and there is standing room
only by the time the film starts. A 15-minute film is shown every
half hour. The English version is shown at 11:30 and 3:30 and
the theater is always crowded for these performances. The film
includes footage of the Dachau homicidal gas chamber which was
shown at the Nuremberg trial. At the end of the film, there is
a shot of the original "Arbeit Macht Frei" gate where
the prisoners entered the camp.
Beyond the door to the movie theater, there is a hallway which
leads to the commemorative room that you see in the two photographs
below. These photographs show the glass cases on each side of
the small room.
Display case in Dachau Museum
Notice the pick triangle on the right in the photograph below.
The inscription at the top reads "Beaten to death, killed
again by silence." This refers to the fact that homosexuals
in the camps received very harsh treatment from their fellow
prisoners. In the early days of the Dachau camp, the "kapos,"
who supervised the other prisoners, were German criminals who
were sent to the camp after they finished their prison sentence
because they were considered "career criminals." Later
the internal administration of the Dachau camp was taken over
by the Communist inmates. After the war, the homosexuals were
not included in the commemoration of the victims. There is no
pink triangle on the bas relief sculpture at the International
Monument, and also no green triangle in honor of the German criminals.
At the bottom of the plaque, the words read "To the homosexual
victims of National Socialism, the homosexual initiatives of
Munich, 1985."
According to the US Holocaust Museum, there were a total of
10,000 homosexuals who were sent to all the concentration camps
in Germany for violations of Paragraph 175 in the German penal
code. This law had been in place since Germany became a united
country in 1871, but had not been enforced. Most of the homosexuals
were arrested in Berlin and taken to the nearby Sachsenhausen
camp, where there is also a pink triangle in their honor. The
pink triangle in the glass case at Dachau was placed here on
June 18, 1995.
Pink triangle honors the persecuted homosexuals
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