A sad day at one of Hitler's concentration camps

By: Kati Tanner

In this picture I am standing outside of the gas chamber.

This is the front gate to the concentration camp.  The words mean "work will set you free."

“How could someone come up with this?” This is what I said as I was walking through Dachau, the very first Nazi concentration camp to be built. Well, to answer my question, Adolf Hitler did and it is not a good idea. Hitler built this concentration camp in 1933. It is located just outside of Munich, Germany, about a 20-minute train ride from our hotel.

This concentration camp, which is like a really bad prison, is a place that started before World War II.  Hitler was trying to take over the world and sent everyone that he hated, mostly Jewish people, to this place and basically did everything he could to try and kill them.  If you were sent here, you were beaten, forced to work really hard, and given little or no food. Many people died from starvation.  If you didn’t die of hunger, you could be shot, hanged, worked to death or put in the gas chamber.

The gas chamber is a place that looked like a big shower.  Prisoners were told to get in the “shower,” but instead of getting clean, poison gas killed them instead.  After someone was killed, their body was burned in a fireplace called a crematorium. 

I was scared when I walked into the gas chamber.  Even though my mom told me there was no gas, I still held my breath.  Today was a sad day and I wish Hitler never lived.   Can you imagine living in a concentration camp?  

 I learned that people who were in this camp got so hungry that they would eat dandelions to try and stay alive.
I left some dandelions to honor the people who died at Dachua.