Many of these Germans had served in government, the military, or in civil positions, which were considered to enable them to engage in subversion and conspiracy against the Nazis. Among the other denominations, there were 109 Protestants, 22 Greek Orthodox, 8 Old Catholics and Mariavites and 2 Muslims. [12], The camp's layout and building plans were developed by Commandant Theodor Eicke and were applied to all later camps. The camp's organization and routine became the model for all Nazi concentration camps. Typhus Epidemic Sweeping Camp. Tear gas was used by the soldiers before rushing the building. [100], An Inspector General report resulting from a US Army investigation conducted between 3 and 8 May 1945 and titled, "American Army Investigation of Alleged Mistreatment of German Guards at Dachau," found that 21 plus "a number" of presumed SS men were killed with others being wounded after their surrender had been accepted. (See, The U.S. 7th Army's version of the events of the Dachau Liberation is available in. [53], Whatever the publicly stated purpose of the camp, the SS men who arrived there on 11 May 1933 were left in no illusion as to its real purpose by the speech given on that day by Johann-Erasmus Freiherr von Malsen-Ponickau[54]. The number of Jewish prisoners at Dachau rose with the increased persecution of Jews. In spite of this one hundred prisoners died each day during the first month from typhus, dysentery or general weakness". Dachau Concentration Camp administration. The construction was officially completed in mid-August 1938 and the camp remained essentially unchanged and in operation until 1945. The organisation, structure, and practice developed at Dachau in 1933-1934 became the model for the Nazi concentration camp system as it expanded. Höss was a model SS man and rose through the ranks, eventually being promoted to Rapportfuehrer, chief assistant to the commander of Dachau. the 4th Infantry Division, 36th Infantry Division, 42nd Infantry Division, 45th Infantry Division, 63rd Infantry Division, 99th Infantry Division, 103rd Infantry Division, 10th Armored Division, 12th Armored Division, 14th Armored Division, 20th Armored Division, and the 101st Airborne Division.[99]. He said they were sentenced to death by order of Heinrich Himmler and the Reich Main Security Office. Dachau was used as the chief camp for Christian (mainly Catholic)[63] clergy who were imprisoned for not conforming with the Nazi Party line. "Majdanek Concentration Camp (a.k.a. During his time as commandant in Dachau, 35 people were hanged and 18 people were shot. 2. It also served as a military base for the United States, which maintained forces in the country. After liberation, prisoners weakened beyond recovery by the starvation conditions continued to die. In 1933, the year in which Hitler declared himself Chancellor, Heinrich Himmler gave orders for the camp in Dachau to be built – making it Germany’s first concentration camp. [13], In early 1937, the SS, using prisoner labor, initiated construction of a large complex of buildings on the grounds of the original camp. One of Dachau's first commandants,Theodor Eicke, developed a penal code that Himmler extended to the entire Nazi concentration camp system. Since my task force was leading the regimental attack, almost all the prisoners were taken by the task force, including several hundred from Dachau. That night a secretly formed International Prisoners Committee took over the control of the camp. [74] An anonymous Dutch prisoner contended that British Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent Noor Inayat Khan was cruelly beaten by SS officer Wilhelm Ruppert before being shot from behind; the beating may have been the actual cause of her death. [52] The political prisoners who were there because they disagreed with Nazi Party policies, or with Hitler, naturally did not consider themselves criminals. They hoped to prevent the liberation of large numbers of prisoners. On 29 April Sparks led part of his battalion as they entered the camp over a side wall. Chief of Staff Testimony of: Capt. Nearly three hundred dead bodies were ordered removed from the train and carried to a ravine over 400 metres (.25 mi) away. He took up his position as commander of Majdanek concentration camp on 4 November 1943. Political prisoners, Poles, Romani, Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholic priests, Communists, This page was last edited on 1 March 2021, at 15:53. SS troops and police confiscated food and water that local townspeople tried to give to the prisoners. Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site: Sobering experience - See 6,190 traveller reviews, 7,919 candid photos, and great deals for Dachau, Germany, at Tripadvisor. • SS-Standartenführer Hilmar Wäckerle (22 March 1933 – 26 June 1933) From April 1933 he served with the guards of Dachau concentration camp; from November 1933 till February 1938 he was the engineer of the camp. Newspapers continually reported "the removal of the enemies of the Reich to concentration camps." [13], Hundreds of prisoners suffered and died, or were executed in medical experiments conducted at KZ Dachau, for which Sigmund Rascher was in charge. The occupants of one barracks rioted as 271 of the Russian deserters were to be loaded onto trains that would return them to Russian-controlled lands, as agreed at the Yalta Conference. [98] Proper clothing was still scarce and film footage from the time (as seen in The World at War) shows naked, gaunt people either wandering on snow or dead under it. After school he continued his education at a mechanical engineering school in Landshut. The camp at that time was called a "protective custody camp," and occupied less than half of the area of the entire complex. Himmler, in signed correspondence, prohibited such a move, adding that "No prisoners shall be allowed to fall into the hands of the enemy alive. Saint John Chrysostomos himself seemed to speak through him to us and to the rest of the world as well! Hypothermia experiments involved exposure to vats of icy water or being strapped down naked outdoors in freezing temperatures. [13], The main gate at Dachau concentration camp, marked with the slogan Arbeit macht frei, Reconnaissance photograph of the Majdanek concentration camp (1944), Camps, ghettos, execution sites and attacks, Perpetrators, participants, organizations, and collaborators, Resistance: Judenrat, victims, documentation and technical. On 28 April he discussed with SS-Standartenführer Kurt Becher how to hand over the camp to the US-Army (uncertain, Becher later remembered only that the name of the man he talked to started with "W" ). As late as 19 April 1945, prisoners were sent to KZ Dachau; on that date a freight train from Buchenwald with nearly 4,500 was diverted to Nammering. He went back to the Weiden area and joined the SS. "It was a chain of miracles ... a lot of luck," said Senger, 77, a financial adviser at Salomon Smith Barney in Paramus. A sign outside of the town of Nammering marks the site of a mass shooting by the SS. Inmates barricaded themselves inside and set fire to the building, tore off their clothing, and linked arms to resist being removed from the building. In the last months of the war, the conditions at Dachau deteriorated. Dachau-Prozess, „Weiß-Kreuzverhör",Vol. From 1933 to 1938, the prisoners were mainly German nationals detained for political reasons. : "1.At the outbreak of war there existed the following concentration camps: a Dachau, 1939, 4,000 prisoners, today 8,000. It was the first regular concentration camp established by the National Socialist (Nazi) government. : A review of David Goldhagen, [, "Holocaust on Trial The experiments by Peter Tyson", "Last Priest from Dachau Concentration Camp Dies at 102", "Norske vakter jobbet i Hitlers konsentrasjonsleire", "The Dachau Trials: Dachau Cases (1945–1947)", http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1167593, "Notorious Nazi Prison Camp is Liberated, 32,000 are Freed", The Liberator: One World War II Soldier's 500-Day Odyssey from the Beaches of Sicily to the Gates of Dachau, The 761st "Black Panther" Tank Battalion in World War II, Dachau 29 April 1945: the Rainbow Liberation Memoirs, "Die Amerikanische Armee entdeckt den Holocaust (The American army discovered the Holocaust)", "Central Europe Campaign – 522nd Field Artillery Battalion", "U.S. Army Divisions Recognized as Liberating Units by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Center of Military", "Testimony of: Lt. Howard E. Buchner, MC, 0-435481, 3rd Bn., 157th Infantry". Between the years 1933 and 1945, more than 3.5 million Germans were imprisoned in such concentration camps or prison for political reasons. Nazi Germany incorporated Austria in the Anschluss of March 11-13, 1938. [35]:201[85]:283[86][87][88], The first Dachau subcamp discovered by advancing Allied forces was Kaufering IV by the 12th Armored Division on 27 April 1945. [42] Once Austria was annexed and Czechoslovakia was dissolved, the citizens of both countries became the next prisoners at Dachau. 27 March 2013. Robert L. Berger, N Engl J Med 1990; 322:1435–1440 May 17, 1990. Everything had to be handed over: money, rings, watches. Evacuated prisoners included such prominent political and religious figures as Martin Niemöller, Kurt von Schuschnigg, Édouard Daladier, Léon Blum, Franz Halder, and Hjalmar Schacht. "Gleb Alexandrovitch Rahr – Prisoner R (Russian) – Pascha (Easter) in Dachau", "Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site (pedagogical information)", "Neue Museumskonzepte für die Konzentrationslager", "The Trial of German Major War Criminals Sitting at Nuremberg, Germany 4th April to 15th April, 1946: One Hundred and Eighth Day: Monday, 15th April, 1946 (Part 1 of 10)", "The original Indiana Jones: Otto Rahn and the temple of doom", "Robert Fisk: Butcher of Buchenwald in an Egyptian paradise", Legacies of Dachau: The Uses and Abuses of a Concentration Camp, 1933–2001, "Reshaping Dachau for Visitors, 1933-2000", Video Footage showing the Liberation of Dachau, Concentration camps of Nazi Germany: illustrated history, "Dachau in the First Days of the Holocaust", "Dachau 1945: The Souls of All Are Aflame", "Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site", "Exhibition Texts of Dachau Camp Memorial", "Dachau Memorial Site, UCSB Department of History", "Dachau (Konzentrationslager Dachau): An Overview", "Dachau Concentration Camp – Liberation: A Documentary – U. S. Massacre of Waffen SS – April 29, 1945", "A Secret Diary Chronicled the 'Satanic World' That Was Dachau", SS Main Economic and Administrative Office, List of major perpetrators of the Holocaust, Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dachau_concentration_camp&oldid=1009639236, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from March 2017, Articles with unsourced statements from August 2020, Articles needing additional references from March 2019, All articles needing additional references, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. 'All Communists and—where necessary—Reichsbanner and Social Democratic functionaries who endanger state security are to be concentrated here, as in the long run it is not possible to keep individual functionaries in the state prisons without overburdening these prisons, and on the other hand these people cannot be released because attempts have shown that they persist in their efforts to agitate and organize as soon as they are released. The entrance gate used by prisoners carries the phrase "Arbeit macht frei" (lit. There Organisation Todt built two underground plants for the production of fighter planes with the forced assistance of prisoners from Dachau. Himmler – in his role of head of the SS – appointed Theodor Eicke as camp commandant. [42] Dachau originally held Communists, leading Socialists and other "enemies of the state" in 1933, but over time the Nazis began to send German Jews to the camp. Before his post-war trial, Weiss insisted that these people were not concentration-camp prisoners, but prisoners of the Gestapo. [71][72][73] Ruppert ordered and supervised the deaths of innumerable prisoners at Dachau main and subcamps, according to the War Crimes Commission official trial transcript. [35], In the second phase of the evacuation, in April 1945, Himmler gave direct evacuation routes for remaining camps. March 20, 1933 - Dachau Opens - Heinrich Himmler, SS leader and chief of the Munich police, announces the opening of the Dachau concentration camp. [20] Prisoners with typhus, a louse-borne disease with an incubation period from 12 to 18 days, were treated by the 116th Evacuation Hospital, while the 127th would be the general hospital for the other illnesses. Many others died of exhaustion, hunger and exposure. A young Greek monk from the Holy Mountain stood up in front of us and recited it with such infectious enthusiasm that we shall never forget him as long as we live. WHITE Major General, G.S.C. The Easter Canon, the Easter Sticheras—everything was recited from memory. [41], After 1942, the number of prisoners regularly held at the camp continued to exceed 12,000. There are several religious memorials within the Memorial Site,[10] which is open to the public. In a cell block used by Catholic priests to say daily Mass, several Greek, Serbian and Russian priests and one Serbian deacon, wearing makeshift vestments made from towels of the SS guard, gathered with several hundred Greek, Serbian and Russian prisoners to celebrate the Paschal Vigil. - Collections Search - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum", "University of Minnesota Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies. [61], During 1942, high altitude experiments were conducted. [33] The camp was about 300 m × 600 m (1,000 ft × 2,000 ft) in rectangular shape. [citation needed], During the war, other nationals were transferred to it, including French; in 1940 Poles; in 1941 people from the Balkans, Czechs, Yugoslavs; and in 1942, Russians. New York Times 18 August 1945. pg . Visitors may now walk through the buildings and view the ovens used to cremate bodies, which hid the evidence of many deaths. Prisoners lived in constant fear of brutal treatment and terror detention including standing cells, floggings, the so-called tree or pole hanging, and standing at attention for extremely long periods. As the German military occupied other European states, citizens from across Europe were sent to concentration camps. It was closed in 1960. ready by early 1934 Dachau had become a model for all other Nazi concentration camps. In March he became adjutant to camp commander Hans Loritz and Alexander Piorkowski. History.com. At the end of April 1945, Weiss was in Dachau, perhaps in order to relieve the commandant, Eduard Weiter. [18], Dachau was the third concentration camp to be liberated by British or American Allied forces.[24]. The other 30 barracks are indicated by low cement curbs filled with pebbles. Hospitalization at Dachau", "War Crimes and Punishment of War Crimes", http://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/1945.html, "Sinti & Roma: Victims of the Nazi Era, 1933–1945", "1216-PS Concentration Camp Dachau: Special Orders (1933)", "Station 2: Jourhouse – Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site", "Station 5: Shunt Room – Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site", "Redeveloping the commemorative site at the former SS shooting range Hebertshausen", "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum", "Commemorative Site at the former "SS Shooting Range Hebertshausen, "Memorial to the murdered Soviet soldiers (Hebertshausen)". In 1940, Dachau became filled with Polish prisoners, who constituted the majority of the prisoner population until Dachau was officially liberated. His father worked for the Royal Bavarian State Railways. A four-foot-deep and eight-foot-broad (1.2 × 2.4 m) creek, connected with the river Amper, lay on the west side between the "neutral-zone" and the electrically charged, and barbed wire fence which surrounded the entire prisoner enclosure. Shortly thereafter, Reichsführer-SS (SS chief) Heinrich Himmler, SS General Oswald Pohl, the chief of the SS Administration and Business Offices, and SS General Theodor Eicke, the Inspector of Concentration Camps, inspected a site they thought suitable for the establishment of a concentration camp to incarcerate, as Upper Austrian Nazi Party dist… Two of the barracks have been rebuilt and one shows 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. On 26 April, over 10,000 prisoners were forced to leave the Dachau concentration camp on foot, in trains, or in trucks. [55][56][57] Approximately 77,000 Germans were killed for one or another form of resistance by Special Courts, courts-martial, and the civil justice system. Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss (also Höß, Hoeß or Hoess; 25 November 1901 – 16 April 1947) was a German SS officer during the Nazi era who, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, was convicted for war crimes.Höss was the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp (from 4 May 1940 to November 1943, and again from 8 May 1944 to 18 January 1945). Subsequently, the camp was used for prisoners of all sorts, from every nation occupied by the forces of the Third Reich. Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and emigrants were sent to Dachau after the 1935 passage of the Nuremberg Laws which institutionalized racial discrimination. In mid-April 1945, female subcamps at Kaufering, Augsburg, and Munich were closed, and the SS stationed the women at Dachau. [19], Over the 12 years of use as a concentration camp, the Dachau administration recorded the intake of 206,206 prisoners and deaths of 31,951. By October of the same year the camp was being used by the U.S. Army as a place of confinement for war criminals, the SS and important witnesses. [31] The former commandant was forced to lie amidst a pile of corpses. Featuring from left to right: an SS man with his arms folded behind his back. 240 List of SS Ranks. As early as 1935, a jingle went around: "Lieber Herr Gott, mach mich stumm, Das ich nicht nach Dachau komm'" ("Dear God, make me dumb [silent], That I may not to Dachau come"). In mid-April, plans to evacuate the camp started by sending prisoners toward Tyrol. 120 were used by Dr Schilling for malaria experiments between July 1942 and May 1944. Tomaz Jardim, The Mauthausen Trial - American Military Justice in Germany (Harvard, 2012) 46. Later he studied electrical engineering in Bad Frankenhausen, finishing in 1930. [119], "Dachau" redirects here. Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site: Somber Experience - See 6,192 traveller reviews, 7,913 candid photos, and great deals for Dachau, Germany, at Tripadvisor. This then was the man who arrived at Auschwitz in … One source gives a general estimate of over 200,000 prisoners from more than 30 countries for the Third Reich's years, of whom two-thirds were political prisoners, including many Catholic priests, and nearly one-third were Jews. When US soldiers reached the gate of the Dachau concentration camp on April 29, 1945, they had no idea what horrors awaited them. 135 The Dachau SS and Masculinity. The buildings were then doused with gasoline and set afire. [65]:141–2 Priests were frequently denounced, arrested and sent to concentration camps, often simply on the basis of being "suspected of activities hostile to the State" or that there was reason to "suppose that his dealings might harm society". [37], Over 4,000 Soviet prisoners of war were murdered by the Dachau commandant's guard at the SS shooting range located at Hebertshausen two kilometers from the main camp in the years 1941/1943. He had a separate, secure camp near the command center, which consisted of living quarters, administration and army camps. Wireless to the New York Times. [49] Months later a mass grave containing 1,071 prisoners was found along the route. He also served from April 1940 until September 1942 as the commandant of Neuengamme concentration camp,[1] and later, from November 1943 until May 1944, as the fourth commandant of Majdanek concentration camp. [3] In the summer of 1926 he joined the Nazi party and founded a chapter of the SA and of the HJ with two friends in Weiden. In September 1936 he was made a … Hermann Pister, in full Hermann Franz Josef Pister, (born February 21, 1885, Lübeck, Germany—died September 28, 1948, Landsberg am Lech), German SS officer who was the second and last commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar, Germany.. After his predecessor, Karl Otto Koch, departed Buchenwald at the end of 1941 to oversee the Majdanek camp, Pister, a … Just before the liberation many German prisoners were evacuated, but 2,000 of these Germans died during the evacuation transport. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of William O. McWorkman SS officer Eichelsdoerfer, the commandant of Kaufering IV, a sub-camp of Dachau… History will likely never know how many people were interned or died there, due to periods of disruption.
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