In the Footsteps of Adolf Hitler

“When the righteous increase, the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule, the people groan” (Proverbs 28:2).

When I first thought of writing this blog post as a second instalment on my recent European trip, I intended it to be a follow up of “In the footsteps of John Calvin.” It was supposed to be entitled, “In the footsteps of Martin Luther.” What a wonderful sequel it was going to be, since these two men were the chief luminaries of the Protestant Reformation! I had intended to close the blog with one of the unbelievable sights I was treated to in Germany—seeing Mercedes Benz taxis. I mean, almost all the taxis I saw were recent models of Mercedes Benz cars. I had to pinch myself to make sure I was not dreaming. I even sent an email back home while I was in Munich, telling my friends that I had finally discovered what I was going to do after retiring as a church pastor in Zambia. I was going to be a taxi driver in Germany!

 
I am still recovering from this sight--Mercedes Benz taxis!

I had my blog post figured out, but the last part of my visit to Germany spoilt everything. My host (Joachim Schmutz, a General Secretary of the Munich YMCA) took me to one of Adolf Hitler’s concentration camps. I am still reeling from the effect of what I saw there. How can a human being do this to fellow human beings?

Preaching at the Munich YMCA, with Joachim Schmutz interpreting into German

The concentration camp I visited was the Dachau Concentration Camp, situated 16 kilometres northwest of Munich. Dachau was the first concentration camp to be opened in Germany by Adolf Hitler and, therefore, served as a model for future camps. It was opened on 22 March 1933, “in the interest of state security,” six years before the Second World War. It was initially meant for the incarceration of political dissidents and ended up being the longest running concentration camp of Hitler’s Third Reich. In its early years, it was the most well known of all the concentration camps and spread fear and terror across Germany.

Dachau Concentration Camp--A major tourist attraction today

As you enter into the camp, you are greeted by the words, “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“Through Work One Will Be Free”). These words spelt out what the people who were kept in these concentration camps were going to be doing—work—but at the same time they spelt out, with tongue in cheek, what was not going to happen—no one was going to really be free. Around the camp you see an electrified barbed wire fence and seven guard towers. When the camp was in operation, prisoners wore different badges to identify who they were—red was for communists and other political prisoners, green for criminals, pink for homosexuals, purple for Jehovah’s Witnesses, black for social misfits, and yellow for Jews.

"Arbeit Marcht Frei" written on the entrance gate spelt your doom!

It is not known exactly how many people were imprisoned in Dachau. A Wikipedia website suggests that there were over 200,000 from more than 30 countries, of whom one-third were Jews. Over 30,000 of these prisoners died in the camp mostly through disease, malnutrition, and suicide. There was overcrowding, poor sanitation, lack of proper medical care, the withholding of food, overwork, beatings, and shootings for the flimsiest of reasons. Many prisoners died in transit because they were moved from one place to another crammed for days or even weeks in railway boxcars meant to carry freight. With no proper sanitation in those boxcars, and with little or no food or water, many just failed to survive. Some arrived in the concentration camp too weak and died a few days later. A crematorium was built to dispose of the dead bodies. By the time the Allied Forces came to the rescue, the death rate had reached 200 inmates per day!

The SS beat many of the prisoners to death as this cartoon shows

Many of those who were incarcerated were Roman Catholic priests (with a few Protestants). They were imprisoned for all kinds of “offences” related to opposing the Nazi Regime. Sometimes the offence consisted of the priest apparently praying a prayer that was against Hitler. Hence there was a “priests block” where they were kept away from other prisoners. Of the 2,700 priests who were imprisoned there, slightly over 1,000 died in the camp, most of them through starvation or malnutrition.

These are the toilets that prisoners used--with no privacy!

On 29 April 1945, Dachau Concentration Camp was surrendered to the US Army. The camp commander and his deputy had already fled and so the remaining guards did not put up any resistance. The US Army found 32,000 prisoners crammed into space meant for a maximum of 5,000 prisoners. In other words, barracks (dormitories) that were supposed to house 250 prisoners each were instead crammed with 1,600. The American soldiers were so horrified by the conditions and the piles of dead bodies they found there that some of them, out of outrage, killed some of the guards who had already surrendered to them. The inmates, upon being freed, also killed some of the guards.

(What is left of) a prisoner commits suicide

It is said that Adolf Hitler was a master of the art of propaganda. The truth of what was really going on in these concentration camps only came to be known after the Allied forces liberated the prisoners. Pictures of piles of dead corpses were circulated in the Press and the world was stunned by what they saw. Even the people of Dachau were shocked to discover what was going on in their very neighbourhood when they came into the camp after the Allied forces called them in to help clean it up. They were totally ignorant of the activities that were taking place in the camp. Hitler used the Press to convey information that either vilified the prisoners or gave the impression that they were being looked after very well. In the meantime, in various concentration camps, millions of prisoners were being slaughtered or were dying of malnutrition and disease.

One of two plaques at the entrance

“How can a human being do this to fellow human beings?” If we understand the Fall of man that took place in Genesis 3 and its consequences, then this should not surprise us at all. This often happens when absolute power is given to a fallen human being who does not know God (as God has revealed himself in Christ). The basic truth that we are all made in the image of our Creator is lost. Hence, “some animals [become] more equal than others.” Those of us who know Christ in a saving way have swapped our own agendas for God’s agenda. Our desire is to see God’s kingdom spread, where truth and love are upheld. This is why true Christianity has always been the vanguard of civilisation and respect for human rights. Hitler lacked that altogether and so ended up with his own self-aggrandising agenda—with totally disastrous consequences.

NEVER AGAIN!

One memorial in the Dachau Concentration Camp that etched itself into my memory is the one that read “Never Again” and was written in Hebrew, German, Russian, and two other languages. Never Again! Sadly, although this is what those who survived the madness of Adolf Hitler felt, genocides have continued to this present day. Here in Africa we stand in horror each time we review the more recent slaughtering of almost a million Tutsis by Hutus in Rwanda. We also have the killing fields of Cambodia where millions were killed in the 1970s. We should never allow this to happen again. As I left the Dachau concentration camp, those words kept ringing in my mind: “Never again!”