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ABSTRACT
In this interesting, provocative, and easy-to-read article, the author describes the recent construction of a residential street (Karl Riemer Strasse) at the former Dachau concentration camp site. The irony of a flourishing suburban community existing where 55 years earlier electrified barbed-wire fences, foreboding camp walls, a gas chamber, and a crematorium shaped the landscape is palpable throughout. Initial construction of the site in the late 1980s resulted in shock and outrage. Opponents maintained that the newly developed site desecrated the memory of those unfortunate souls, Jews and non-Jews alike, who were murdered there. The author brilliantly weaves an understandable history and discussion of the evolution of the community with excerpts of interviews with local residents and others.
GENERAL RECOMMENDATION
This article makes for a fascinating read for middle and high school students. After a brief introduction to the German concentration camp system, the complete article can be copied for class distribution. Using the guiding questions prior to reading the article is suggested, as is the use of selected follow-up questions. These questions can be shared with students in small-group or whole-class discussions.
GLOSSARY OF TERMS/CONCEPTS USED IN THIS ARTICLE
Arbeit Macht Frei
German phrase meaning "Work Makes Free" These words were posted at the entrance of Auschwitz I, Dachau, Theresienstadt, Buchenwald, and several other sites. Part of the Nazi deception policy, these words gave false hope to Jews and other prisoners who essentially had no chance of freedom.
Auschwitz
The largest Nazi annihilation concentration camp, located 37 miles west of Krakow, Poland. Established in 1940, it became an annihilation camp when it began receiving deportees in March/April 1942. Eventually it consisted of a number of sections. Auschwitz II-Birkenau was designated as the main annihilation camp. Between 1.1 and 1.6 million Jews were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Concentration camp
Camps established in the beginning of the Nazi regime (1933) for imprisonment and forced labor of "enemies" of the Reich, political and "anti-social," as well as Jews. Disease, maltreatment and starvation led to many deaths, as did direct mass executions.
Dachau
The first major concentration camp, set up in southern Germany near Munich in 1933. Dachau was initially designed to hold political opponents of the Nazis. However, 10,000 Jewish men were imprisoned at the site following...