Although there is one recreated dormitory building at Dachau, all of the former dormitory buildings on the left and right of this rather stately looking poplar lined main avenue (known as Camp Road) have gone with only their footprints remaining. The long rows of prisoner accommodation that once stretched across the roll-call square are now reduced to just these outlines on the ground, faint concrete or gravel borders marking where walls once stood. Walking down here in the rain, it was hard to really imagine just how noisy and unpleasant this area would once have been.
These footprints are the remains of the camp’s other dormitories, the majority of which were demolished after liberation. Their traces are preserved not as reconstructed facsimiles but as bare, skeletal floor plans so visitors have to use their imagination to contemplate the scenes that once unfolded here. The choice not to rebuild them all was deliberate as to reconstruct twenty-odd barracks would have risked creating something that looked too complete, too much like a functioning place rather than a memorial.
From 1942, medical experiments used to take place here at Barracks 1, although by 1943 they were using prisoners to supply the medical care. Initially, the medical barracks was well-equipped and had the facilities that it needed, but that situation didn’t last long and they were soon struggling to get hold of medical supplies. There’s a hollowness to all of this now, but there’s enough left to be able to understand the scale of what went on here, architectural order and human chaos.
Here’s what the scene looked like in 1945, shortly after the American liberation.