Beware II

A solitary rose laid on the foundations of a prisoners block at Dachau Concentration Camp, near Munich. Over 40,000 of the 200,000 who passed through here between 1933 and 1945 were murdered - worked, starved or tortured to death by a ruthless regime with callous servants. Dachau's gates opened a few months after Adolf Hitler was appointed Chanceller and while he slept in his luxury apartment (see yesterday's blip) up to two thousand people were crammed at night into each barrack the size of the one you see outlined above. You could drive from Hitler's front door with the address plaque Prinzregentenplatz, 16 to the gates here with their notorious lie 'Arbeit Macht Frei' in twenty minutes in a powerful Mercedes.

I was here only a few months ago but felt compelled to return to bear further witness. The last time I did not have time to see the film taken by the US Army when the camp was liberated with its scenes of rake-like men boiling water in tin cans sat beside mounds of rotting corpses nor read the accounts of the Luftwaffe doctors experiments on selected prisoners to see how their bodies failed, organ by organ, when submerged in freezing water, were exposed to high altitude or had puss injected into their veins. In extras there is a moving shot of a handsome young man suspended in an airman's harness seemingly lost in a pleasant dream but more than likely dead.

Continuing yesterday’s theme of vigilance and speaking up, we should all be aware of the danger of a return to these conditions of exploitation and abuse by deluded nationalists. We need look no further then the prisons of Egypt and the 'training camps' of China to see which way the wind is blowing.

A portfolio of shots is in extras including what looks like a night safe but is actually the method used to introduce the Zyclon B gas pellets into the gas chamber, which was never put into full production but was used in experiments and resulted in the murder of groups of prisoners up to 150 at a time.

Here is a link to my last visit with a different selection of shots.

https://www.blipfoto.com/entry/2434719663578418364