Dachau Concentration Camp Essay

At a tragic time like the Holocaust, millions of people were killed in concentration camps. The camp that started it all was the Dachau concentration camp built on March 20, 1933. During Hitler’s reign in World War II, the Nazis built a prison in Dachau out of an old factory. Heinrich Himmler ran it, but instead of prisoners, there were mostly innocent people, especially Jews. Dachau concentration camp served as a prison for Jews, and people who committed the smallest of crimes, but it wasn't just any ordinary prison, it served as a building for torturing and a mass murdering area where prisoners felt pain, loss, and scared.

During the Holocaust, almost every victim had to face suffering including emotional trauma from being so afraid of the

Specifically, Jews were the main targets of the Nazis because Hitler and many others at the time believed “Jews poisoned the wells of Europe, causing the Black Plague. Illustrations depicted Jews as the devil, with horns and cloven feet, and showed them using the blood of Christian children in ritual sacrifices.” (“Why the Jews: History of Antisemitism — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum”) The words “Jews” and “devil” displays that Nazis had developed a huge hatred for Jews that they were even compared to the devil. These are only a few of the many reasons why Jews were the main target of the Nazi party. As time passed and WWII progressed further, the “regime stepped up its attacks on “racial enemies”, a growing number of youths and children were registered as prisoners, mostly young Jews” (“Concentration Camp Quotes (33 quotes)”) The words “children” and “mostly” is concerning considering that they were willing to take in children even though most of them were only Jewish because of their parents. This quote represents the shallowness and mercilessness of the Nazi party. In both of the quotes, the nazis showed no mercy to anyone and did anything they could to make innocent people and children look like monsters when the monster is

These feelings can be observed through a survivor of the holocaust to get a better understanding of what they felt that way at the Dachau concentration camp. Most of the time if the inmates at the Dachau concentration camp didn't feel scared, or terrified, then they would certainly be confused. Like this survivor said “I want to find out from him what happened here, since, despite the fact that I can see the clothes left behind by the victims, I still cannot grasp what is going on.” ― Chil Rajchman. The quote shows signs of confusion in words “I still cannot graph what is going on” We can infer that in the quote, Rajchman has just entered the camp and still does not know what hides behind the walls of the camp which is why he is confused. It would be reasonable to be confused at this time because it was the first time that a concentration camp was ever built and no one knew what it was. Those who knew what was going on at the Dachau concentration camp felt that it would be safest to just blend in and not do anything that will make them get noticed or stand out too much. “The camp inmate was frightened of making decisions and of taking any sort of initiative whatsoever.” ― Viktor E. Frankl. Frankl mentions words like “frightened” and “initiative” to demonstrate that one of the inmates was so scared of being noticed or known. In both of these quotes, the prisoners were afraid of the