did they really have pointless tasks like that in the concentration camp

You are making the mistake of applying reason and logic to this mess, makes you a hell of a lot smarter than the camp's creators. Not much in the concentration camps made sense including the camps themselves. Why not use the free slave labor you had to help fight the war? Well that would be one of the reasons they lost, good thing too. The whole point was death either fast or slow didn't matter, just eliminate the "lesser" races.

[deleted]

Nice thread, I'm really curious learning about history and this is interesting stuff, thanks

Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!

In reality they had the workers doing productive work, usually related to the war effort

A few things to bear in mind:

Dachau opened six years before the war started.
What went on had very little to do with the Holocaust.
Homosexuality was a crime in Germany before the Nazis and was one of the Nazi laws which was maintained after the war.

For the first few years Dachau was really used as a 're-education' center people were mistreated and released; under the threat that they would return if they re-offended (whatever the crime that they were convicted of). So, it may seem pointless, but it serves a purpose.

It was logical what was done and why it was done, if you cannot see the logic, you need to work out why not.

In these early years of concentration camps the Nazis were learning how to control inmates and how to get them to do what they wanted to do.

But they did use prisoners to build roads, construct munitions, drain swamps, etc. This camp itself was built by political prisoners. some of whom were used as guinea pigs to conduct horrendous medical experiments: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/dachau.html

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005214

I'd also suggest to browse these testimonies for the most historically accurate accounts: https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_list.php?MediaType=oh