Dachau concentration camp

File:Himmler visits Dachau 1936.jpg

SS Chief Heinrich Himmler inspects the Dachau concentration camp (1936)

The Dachau concentration camp was a Nazi German concentration camp near the city of Dachau, north of Munich, in southern Germany.

The camp was constructed in a disused gunpowder factory and was completed on March 21, 1933. Together with the Auschwitz extermination camp, Dachau has become "the" concentration camp for most non-experts.

1933-1945

Dachau was the first Nazi concentration camp and served as a prototype and model for the others that followed. The basic organization, camp layout as well as the plan for the buildings were developed by Kommandant Theodor Eicke and were applied to all later camps. He had a separate secure camp near the command center, which consisted of living quarters, administration, and army camps. Eicke himself became the chief inspector for all concentration camps, responsible for molding the others according to his model.

In total, over 200,000 prisoners from more than 30 countries were housed in Dachau. Beginning in 1941, Dachau was also used for extermination purposes. Camp records list 30,000 persons killed in the camp, with thousands more who died due to the conditions in the camp. In early 1945, there was a typhus epidemic in the camp followed by an evacuation, in which large numbers of the weaker prisoners died.

Due to the number of deaths and killings, the cremation facility had to be expanded, as the existing one was unable to keep up with the number of bodies to be disposed of. At the same time, a gas chamber was added to the camp. This, however, was never put into use, as the prisoners destined for death were transferred to other camps.

Dachau also served as the central camp for Christian religious prisoners. According to records of the Roman Catholic Church, at least 3000 religious, deacons, priests, and bishops were imprisoned there. Particularly notable among the Christian residents are Karl Leisner (Catholic priest ordained while in the camp, beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1996) and Martin Niemöller (Protestant theologian and Nazi resistance leader). In September 1944 a women's camp opened inside Dachau. Its first shipment of women came from Auschwitz Birkenau. Only nineteen women guards served at Dachau, most of them until liberation, and only sixty-three served in the Dachau complex. We know fifteen female overseers by name; Fanny Eleonore Baur, Leopoldine Bittermann, Ernestine Brenner, Anna Buck, Rosa Dolaschko, Maria Eder, Rosa Grassmann, Betty Hanneschaleger, Ruth Elfriede Hildner, Josefa Keller, Berta Kimplinger, Lieselotte Klaudat, Thereia Kopp, Rosalie Leimboeck, and Thea Miesl***. Women guards were also staffed at the Augsburg Michelwerke, Burgau, Kaufering, Muhldorf, and Munich Agfa Camera Werke subcamps.

The last head of the camp was Oskar Müller, who later became minister of labor for Hessia. According to the report of Father Johannes Maria Lenz, Müller sent two prisoners to bring the U.S. army to free the camp, because orders had come in to kill all the prisoners.

Liberation of the camp, 1945

The camp was freed by the U.S. army on April 29, 1945. It was used for many years thereafter as a residence for refugees.

It holds a significant place in public memory because it was the first camp to be liberated by British or American forces, and therefore it was the first place in which the West was exposed to the reality of Nazi brutality through first-hand journalist accounts and through newsreels. After the camp was surrendered to Allied forces, the troops were so horrified by conditions at the camp that they summarily shot all of the camp guards.

The memorial site

The cremation ovens of the concentration camp are still viewable at the Dachau memorial site. The ovens were used to dispose of the bodies of the over 30,000 persons who were killed or otherwise died in the camp.

Years later, former prisoners banded together to erect a memorial on the site of the camp, finding it unbelievable that there were still persons (refugees) living in the camp under those conditions.

The display, which was reworked in 2003, takes the visitor through the path of new arrivals to the camp. Special presentations of some of the notable prisoners are also provided. One of the barracks has been rebuilt to show a cross-section of the entire history of the camp, since the original barracks had to be torn down due to their poor condition when the memorial was built. The other 32 barracks are indicated by cement foundations.

The memorial includes four chapels for the various religions represented among the prisoners.

• • • All the information on the female overseers was found in the book "THE CAMP WOMEN The Female Auxiliaries who Assisted the SS in Running the Nazi Concentration Camp System" by Daniel Patrick Brown.

Famous prisoners of Dachau

Jews

• Bruno Bettelheim, imprisoned in 1938, freed in 1939; left Germany
• Viktor Frankl, psychotherapist from Vienna, Austria
• David Ludwig Bloch, painter, arrested in November 1938 in connection with Kristallnacht

Nazi resistance fighters

• Georg Elser, died April 9, 1945

Religious ministers

Dachau had a special "priest block". Of the approximately 1000 priests held in Dachau, about half survived.

• Anton Fränznick, in Dachau since 1942, died January 27, 1944
• blessed Stefan Grelewski, Catholic priest, prisoner No. 25281, starved to death in Dachau on May 9, 1941
• Karl Leisner, in Dachau since December 14, 1941, freed May 4, 1945, but died on August 12 from the tuberculosis contracted in the camp
• Martin Niemöller, imprisoned in 1941, freed May 4, 1945
• Hermann Scheipers
• Richard Schneider, in Dachau since November 22, 1940, freed March 29, 1945
• Aloys Scholze, died September 1, 1942

Politicians

• Leopold Figel, arrested 1938, released May 8, 1943
• Alois Hundhammer, arrested June 21, 1933, freed July 6, 1933
• Kurt Schumacher, in Dachau since July 1935, sent to Flossenbürg concentration camp in 1939, returned to Dachau in 1940, released due to extreme illness March 16, 1943
• Stefan Starzyński, the President of Warsaw, probably murdered in Dachau in 1943

Communists

• Alfred Andersch, held 6 months in 1933
• Emil Carlebach (Jewish), in Dachau since 1937, sent to Buchenwald concentration camp in 1938
• Nikolaos Zachariadis (Greek), from November 1941 to May 1945
• Oskar Müller, in Dachau since 1939, freed 1945

Writers

• Tadeusz Borowski, writer, survived, but committed suicide in 1951
• Stanisław Grzesiuk, Polish writer, poet and singer, Varsavianist, in Dachau since April 4, 1940, later transferred to Mauthausen-Gusen complex
• Gustaw Morcinek, Polish Silesian writer
• Jura Soyfer, in Dachau 6 months in 1938, transferred to Buchenwald

See also

• List of subcamps of Dachau
• List of German concentration camps

External links

• Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site