An Analysis Of Harold Porter's 'Dachau'

In the early 1930s, the residents of the picturesque city of Dachau, Germany, were completely unaware of the horrific events about to unfold that would overshadow their city still today. The citizens of Dachau were oblivious that their city was going to become the origin of concentration camps and of the Holocaust, the mass murder committed by the Nazi s in World War II. Dachau Concentration Camp, which would soon be placed on the edge of their community, would serve as a model for all Nazi extermination camps. This perfect prototype of a Nazi killing machine has come to represent the start of the horror-filled Holocaust and the Nazi's determination to achieve a perfect society during World War II.

Nine years after Dachau opened, the crematorium area was located beside the main camp. The old crematorium and the new crematorium was included. There was also a gas chamber, however there isn’t any credible evidence that the gas chamber in Barrack X was used to murder human beings. The gas chambers were actually for something called “selection”. Selection was when all of the Jews at the camp would go to the gas chambers to be evaluated. If a Jew was marked down as not strong enough to do work or too sick then they were sent to the Hartheim "euthanasia" killing center near Linz, Austria. Many Jewish people were killed this way. The crematoria are was also where the SS camp guards would kill prisoners; they would also kill the prisoners at the firing range. Another way that the Jewish People and prisoners were killed at Dachau was when German physicians would do medical experiment on the prisoners “including high-altitude experiments using a decompression chamber, malaria and tuberculosis experiments, hypothermia experiments, and experiments testing new medications. Prisoners were also forced to test methods of making seawater potable and of halting excessive bleeding” ("Dachau"). During this process there were hundreds of prisoners left dead, or with permanent disabilities. During World War II all of the Jews were forced to do work “Prisoners were forced to do this work, starting with the

Having survived Auschwitz and possibly weeks running from the encroaching allied front, the dead march comes to a halt at an abandoned village. Many collapse where they stop, some making their way indoors to crowded sheds and cover. Those who fall asleep in the deceptive snow don’t wake up, and the next morning Elie and his father are welcomed by a horrific sight, “[we were] walking in a cemetery, among stiffened corpses, logs of wood” (84). By describing the dead as “logs of wood” Wiesel paints an inanimate feeling on the once people. No longer are they the remnants of the dead, but logs, old wood, garbage.

The sleeping conditions for jew were in terrible conditions. “Several hundred three-tier wooden bunk beds were installed in each building” (“Auschwitz…”) The barracks were highly populated with rats and other vermin. There were straw mattresses for people who had abdominal issues (“Auschwitz…”). To many who

The Holocaust was one of the world’s major tragedies. If you were a Jew the Nazis would take you to concentration camp and you would have to do everything they said, you would get your head shaved, and be treated awful. Millions died. They would choose Jews to take to the gas chamber, usually the weakest and most unhealthy ones because they weren’t much good to work anymore. “Yolen, Jane. The Devil's Arithmetic. New York, NY, U.S.A.: Viking Kestrel, 1988. Print.”

Names are taken from the Jews and replaced with numbers when they enter the camp. This act is an attempt to steal the Jews’ identities; however, they fight against this act of dehumanization. The Nazi’s hoped to kill them mentally by doing this. My arm burns. I look up into the blue eyes of a Nazi guard as he burns the number into my skin. I smell burning flesh and want to barf. All around me irons are being heated up. “You

Last but not least is the sense of smell which Wiesel used throughout the book by explaining the burners and crematories. “In front of us, those flames. In the air, the smell of burning flesh. It must have been around midnight. We had arrived. In Birkenau” (28, Wiesel). Along with the smell Wiesel had witnessed and heard awful events that took place in the burners. "Over there. Do you see the chimney over there? Do you see it? And the flames, do you see them?" (Yes, we saw the flames.) "Over there, that’s where they will take you. Over there will be your grave. You still don’t understand? You sons of bitches. Don’t you understand anything? You will be burned! Burned into a cinder! Turned to ashes" (30-31, Wiesel). This shows a different tone. It shows fear and worry because does anyone really

“The camp looked as though it had been through an epidemic: empty and dead” (47); even when there is a break in between the horror and pain of working for Nazis in concentration camps and suffering from hunger, it is dead, empty and inhuman; this meaningful passage about the complete and utter truth of concentration camps comes from a memoir, Night, by Elie Wiesel. Vocabulary in this passage, is nothing short of exemplary, the words completely compliment the message being shared in this quote. Elie Wiesel describes the atrocious Buna camp as if it were through an epidemic, an outbreak, rendering people empty and dead due to starvation, lack of sleep, and over exertion. This paints a complete and thorough visual of how he viewed concentration

The sick Schreiber carried his box to Block 14, and then the Waschraum. Onlookers thought he was odd considering he could have given these items away before being executed. However, one onlooker; a doctor reminds the readers that, “Something [could] surely happen along the way. Holding a package would be a little like holding somebody’s hand.” (pp.150) The theme of this short story is that the victims of the Holocaust were surely strong at heart and would not give up until the bitter end. Lastly, another theme that could be derived is that no one can understand death until it is staring them in the face; this was symbolized when the author stated, “The Jews who were driven to the gas chamber sand some soul-stirring Hebrew song which nobody could understand.” (pp.151) While most of the prisoners in the camp were Jewish, no one except those being driven to their deaths could understand the hymn that was sung.

In front of us, those flames. In the air, the smell of burning flesh” (28). The flames Mrs. Schacher was talking about were the ashes of the Jews that were burned in the camps. Fire represents death, one of the many dreadful events that happened at the Holocaust.

as the battlefield. Soldiers allowed garbage to pile up in the camps.”(Melisa King) As stated by Melissa King,

Elie Wiesel uses the elements of Fire,Night and Corpses to symbolize the horror of the Holocaust through imagery in his book Night. “Look!Look at this fire! This terrible fire! Have mercy on me!” “Jews, listen to me,” she cried.

He wrote that, "It is impossible to give an adequate description on paper" (Collis 1). There were two camps at Belsen; Camp 1, known as the "Horror Camp" because of all of the corpses one would see when they arrived. Camp 2, which was the Hospital Camp. Adults and children were in tattered rags. All anyone could smell was "...the stench of decaying faeces, rotting bodies, and burning rags, which in the first weeks one could begin to smell miles from the camp..." (Collis 2). 500 was the daily death rate, and still it was expressed in the report that, the Children's blocks still remained the happiest. They were more resilient to what was going on and didn't completely understand it either. They must've been completely oblivious to the immense amount of death surrounding them if they were still happy. Sanitation wasn't present, so disease spread like wildfire, consuming hundreds by the day, explaining why Camp 1 was called the "Horror

In this scene from Night, Elie Weisel writes about the ways the Germans treat the prisoners when they arrive at Auschwitz. In this scene, Weisel teaches his reader how the Germans brutalize their prisoners. Weisel describes the Germans as “beating” the prisoners repeatedly and forcing them into “disinfection,” this is similar to how one wouuld treat an object or animal, not a human being. This reflects the brutalizing of the prisoners. Elie writes about how as the prisoners were running they “threw” clothes at them and in that moment they had “ceased to be men”. Weisel also writes about how Meir Katz, “wore a child’s pants” and how Stern, was “floundering in a huge jacket.” The Nazis did not give the prisoners the proper clothes and threw the

Inmates resembled skeletons and were so weak they were unable to move. The smell of burning bodies was ever present and piles of corpses were scattered around the camp. However, you could be “saved” from the crematoria to be used as test subjects to cruel experimentation and used as lab rats for any experiment the scientists wanted to conduct. Later in the war, extermination camps were built. These were specialized for the mass murder of Jews using Zyklon B to ensure a painful, long, and torturous death. The bodies would then be thrown into the fire and all clothes, teeth, and shoes would be sent to pursue the German war front. At max efficiency, 20,000 people would be killed in the gas chambers a day. As the red Army approached near to liberate the Jews in concentration and extermination camps, SS officers sent prisoners on a death march across hundreds of miles, where they ran with no food or water, no matter the weather, until they reached the closest camp. SS officers proceeded to blow up the camps to hide the genocide from the