Dachau Concentration Camp

A short update on work. I am working more and more on the motorcycle test bench. My boss Fritz and I are performing photogrammetry measurements on a BMW motorcycle for the first time in BMW’s history. Right now it is basically a pilot where we are running tests and finding ways to refine the test bench. It has recently escalated to an urgent project and a lot of money is going into it. It is really cool to be a part of it and to see the project grow and grow. I’m learning more about how to use different tools in the lab and how to look for important stiffness test points and how to use the software that calculates the deformations.

On Saturday, I made the trip out to Dachau concentration camp. I got there and took a guided tour. To start, it was a heavy experience. It’s one thing to read about what happened or to watch a documentary about it, but actually being there is chilling. I will explain some of the things I learned and experienced, but I caution you that some of the details are graphic.

Dachau began as a group of abandoned buildings that used to produce ammunition, but was transformed into a concentration camp originally for political opponents to be questioned and held captive. And this was what the government continued to tell people. The Nazi party used propaganda to convince everyone that this was a prison for enemies of the state, while hiding what actually was taking place there. Dachau became the first concentration camp and the model for the rest because of its organizational structure, efficiency, and system of order and discipline. People considered undesirable by the Nazi party were brought here. This included political opponents, religious figures, homosexuals, the disabled, Jews, etc. Dachau was not a mass extermination camp like Auschwitz but was rather a work camp. Most people died here from beatings, torture, work fatigue, malnutrition, disease, and some even from human medical experiments. We walked through the shower rooms, registration rooms, medical rooms, through the dormitories, and through the “Bunker” where people were taken for extra punishment. After people were severely beaten for something they did wrong, they came here to receive further punishment. Some even got the standing torture where they were forced to stand in a cell without leaning for typically 72 hours. Most prisoners who went through this either collapsed or went mentally insane.

The camp was originally only supposed to hold 7,000 people but toward the end of the war, there were about 40,000 there. This meant they had to sleep so close to each other that they had to sleep on their sides in bed touching on both sides with no room to move. Their typical day consisted of breakfast of a piece of bread and work starting I think around 7am and going until 7pm and dinner consisted of soup. That was all they got to eat, so you can understand how they got bone-thin. This made revolting impossible because the prisoners were too weak. They were also never allowed to be in a group of more than 3 people or they would be accused of conspiracy and shot without warning. It was impossible to conspire in the dormitories too because nobody knew who was an informer for the guards, with the promise of better treatment. In effect, this was all part of the plan to make escape absolutely impossible. In fact, the only escape for many was to end their life by touching the electrified barbed wire fence. I forget the exact wording, but they nicknamed the fence the “way to freedom”. The Nazi’s considered these people to be inferior and undesirable and they were treated accordingly.

Particularly haunting was visiting the crematorium where the dead bodies were burned in ovens. It was heart wrenching to look at pictures of piles of dead bodies and walk through the rooms where they were stored in preparation to be burned and then walk through the rooms with the ovens and imagine what took place here. In the crematory there were also gas chambers installed, but for unknown reasons they were never used at this particular concentration camp.

The camp was liberated by US soldiers in 1945 after 12 years of operation. The youngest survivors today are in their 90’s and they are still coming back every year together to remember. I cannot imagine the horrific memories that surface.


The opportunity to visit this concentration camp has been made possible because Germany has intentionally preserved it. Germany has very honestly and openly preserved the horrible memories from the past intentionally in order to remember what happened and prevent things like this from ever occurring again.