Dachau

First Nazi Concentration Camp. The camp was located in the small German town of Dachau, about 10 miles northwest of Munich. It was established in March 1933 and liberated in April 1945. Altogether, more than 200,000 prisoners passed through the camp, and over 30,000 officially died there, although the true figure is certainly much higher.

The originial purpose of the camp was to silence any opponent of the Nazis; it was also meant to scare the people of Germany into obeying and supporting the Nazi regime. The commandant of Dachau, Theodor Eicke, ran the camp according to a strict system of rules and regulations. He was aided by a staff that consisted of members of the SS's Death'S Head Units, known for their brutality. When he was later made inspector general for all concentration camps, Eicke used those same regulations to run other camps. In that way, Dachau was an effective training ground for the Nazis' cruel agenda.

Dachau was opened in March 1933, soon after Hitler rose to national power in Germany. The first prisoners interned at the camp were known political enemies of the Nazi regime, mostly Communists and Social Democrats. According to the Nazis, they had been taken into "protective-custody." These political prisoners, who had arrived first and knew the camp best, held most of the important positions in the prisoners' internal government, set up by the SS. From 1935 on, people who had been condemned in court were immediately sent to a concentration camp such as Dachau. The first Jews brought to the camp were also political enemies of the Reich. However, they were treated worse than other inmates.

Soon other groups were imprisoned, including Gypsies who, like the Jews, were considered to be an inferior race; homosexuals; Jehovah's Witnesses, who refused to serve in the army; clergymen, who protested the way the Nazis controlled the churches; and many others who had criticized the Nazis.

More and more Jews were brought to Dachau as the Nazis' systematic persecution of Jews picked up speed. After the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9--10, 1938, more than 10,000 German Jews were imprisoned. In 1942, when the "final solution" began in earnest, Jews were sent from Dachau and other camps within the Reich to extermination camps in poland.

Several thousand Austrians were brought to Dachau during the summer of 1939. This signaled the beginning of the transports that would come throughout the war from each country as it was occupied by the German army. The Austrian prisoners included Jews, resistance fighters, clergymen, and others who would not cooperate with the Nazi occupations.

Dachau was surrounded by an electrified fence and a large ditch filled with water. Upon arrival at the camp, prisoners lost all legal rights and their possessions were taken away. Their hair was shaved off and they were dressed in striped prison uniforms. Each prisoner was given an identification number and a colored triangle that signified what prisoner category they belonged to (Jew, Gypsy, homosexual, etc.). They were worked to the bone, given minute amounts of food, and lived under the threat of horribly cruel treatment at the hands of the prison guards.

The Nazis took merciless advantage of the cheap labor provided by the prisoners. The prisoners were forced to build roads, work in quarries, and drain marshes. As the war continued, weapons production became more and more important to the Nazis, so thousands of Jewish prisoners from hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the soviet union were brought to Dachau to work on armaments. Thirty-six large camps were added at Dachau to house 37,000 prisoners working at its arms factories. Private firms could also hire slave laborers from Dachau; those firms paid the SS directly and the laborers saw none of their wages. Prisoners would work until they became too sick to continue, at which point other, healthier inmates would replace them.

Like at some other camps, medical experiments were performed on prisoners at Dachau; they were used as human guinea pigs. Dr. Sigmund Rascher, an SS physician, conducted "decompression" and "high-altitude" experiments, while Professor Dr. Claus Schilling, a well-known tropical medicine researcher, ran a malaria experiment station at the camp. He infected about 1,100 inmates with malaria, in hopes of finding an immunization against the disease. In addition, other pseudo-medical experiments were performed on Dachau prisoners: some had inflammations and poisoned states induced in them to test reactions to different medicines; others were cut to test anti-bleeding medications. Tests were also done to see if seawater could be made drinkable, and there was a tuberculosis experiment station on site.

During the last few months before Dachau was liberated, the prisoners lived under even worse conditions than before. Thousands of prisoners were brought from other camps that had been evacuated with the knowledge that the Allies were quickly advancing. Barracks meant to house 200 prisoners were jammed with more than 1,600. A typhus epidemic swept Dachau, killing 100--200 prisoners a day. Inmates formed an underground committee to help their fellow prisoners survive and resist SS plans to liquidate the camp. On April 26, 1945 the SS force-marched 7,000 prisoners south. Those who fell behind were shot, and many died from hunger, exhaustion, or cold. The marchers who survived were overtaken by American troops at the beginning of May---after the SS guards had disappeared.

Dachau was liberated on April 29, 1945 by the Seventh Army of the United States armed forces. At that point, there were more than 60,000 prisoners in the camp; they had come from more than 30 countries and by that time, there was only a small minority of Germans. About 30 percent of the inmates were Jewish.

After the war, 40 members of Dachau's SS staff were caught. An American court put them on trial at the camp between November 15 and December 14, 1945. Of the 40 tried, 36 were sentenced to death.