What are some quotes from Dachau prisoners?

Answer 1

If you are interested in the stories of the survivors look up any of the Holocaust Memorial Websites around the world . http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org/ Holocaust Survivors and http://www.yadvashem.org/ Yad Vashem are two good starting places. When looking for quotes use key words like Oral History, Testimony to find more stories from surivivors.

My first thoughts were those many others: "The world has gone mad." People (Germans) use to frighten their children, "If you do not behave, you will surely end up at Dachau." Theodore Haas (sorry I lost the link)

Most of us died of starvation or cold or were killed...If your feet froze, you were sent to the infirmary where there was no medical care and your one slice of bread a day was taken away,... It was a death sentence. Alex Bauer http://www.svcn.com/archives/sunnyvalesun/04.03.02/cover-0214.html

I don't know. I had a cousin before the war. When they went back to Poland, they didn't find nothing from the family. Nobody. I had uncles, father, mother, from mother's side, from father's side. Nobody.

MARTIN WASSERMAN

http://www.southerninstitute.info/holocaust_education/martin_wasserman.html

But then almost everyday uh, the SS came and, and they selected those who seemingly able to work and they took to different uh, camps uh, satellite camps uh,around. So everyday-almost everyday they took certain amount of people from the barracks. Emerich Grinbaum http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/grinbaum/section036.html

...march it was like a dead march and so many girls fell, they couldn't walk anymore, they couldn't. We were also, now we saved a piece of bread, we saved this. And we got a cover. We marched towards uh, Dachau-Allach. It was a-it's a-it was a big camp. It was already in April... And my sister, my youngest sister couldn't walk anymore. So I hold her on my shoulder for a time and she could...couldn't move.

... So us three walked. And my older sister got sick too. She walked too. But me and my other sister carried her by hand. Finally we came to Allach [Dachau] And we heard already ..., the Americans are here already. [The Germans] knew already it's the end, because they didn't hit us, they didn't shoot us. ... And my sister went away to the hospital, my older sister. Very sick. And the following day my younger sister went to the hospital. She got typhus. And the shooting was there night and day, night and day. Two days later the Americans came.

Sonia Nothman

http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/nothmans/section022.html

I remember many other things in several Dachau concentration camps in Bavaria. One of these was the Riederloh camp, apparently designed as a punishment camp (!). There my father, Maksymilian Jozef Plywacki, became one of the walking dead

Walter Plywaski talking about his father's death in one of the satellite camps

http://www.jewishmag.com/117mag/iremember/iremember.htm

But playing, I was not even allowed to play anything else but classical. And the Kapo looked at, eagerly, to, to the SS, "When shall I whack him? When shall I hit him?" Instead, the SS guard was humming the melody, and was beating the rhythm with his fingers--like 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. And he, he just smiled and, "Let him live."

Sandor Braun on being forced to play music for SS guards

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/media_oi.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005214&MediaId=1211

And, uh, I said something to the guy when he was beating up some of the boys who were just too weak, and then he hit on me. You know, we were at that, at that point very desperate. We knew it, it was only a matter of...that we would never get out alive, they told us that even. They said, "We leave you alive you're gonna kill us, so we may as well kill you all." They used to say things like that, which was obvious. And, uh, we were very desperate in the early part of '45, very little food. The Germans, uh, were gonna kill as many as they could. And, uh, they were also anxious because their war machine was running out, so they made us work harder to do those, uh, those factories, they still wanted to complete it. And I'm sure they were under, in retrospect, I can think they were under enormous pressure from the contractors whom they, whom we worked for, that they wanted to get as much labor out of us as possible. And, uh, it was tough; a lot of people got killed.

William Lowenburg

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/media_oi.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005214&MediaId=2496

"You were just a few seconds away from being thrust into the

crematorium, and they saw that you were still alive." They said,

"You're the first youth that age who actually made it alive."

And then they took me and they hid me, you know, secretly in their

barracks. So I was not even supposed to have been there. And I

became like, to them, like a hero. That here are these fathers who

said, well, if I made it then maybe their children would have made

it through. And they...since I didn't get any rations, because I

was...The ration was there like a piece of bread--enough to keep

them alive til they were actually being...were going to be taken

to the crematorium. And each one would take a piece of bread they

would got, break off a piece and make up a slice for me, so that I

could survive. And they said, "David, you must survive and let the

world know what happened."

David Bergman

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/media_oi.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005214&MediaId=1112