Dachau was the first concentration camp, established in 1933 by the infamous Heinrich Himmler himself. At the peak of it's operation, over 30,000 people were interned in this camp - designed for a mere 5,000 people.
There were many concentration camps built all over Germany and Europe during world war II. The method of operation was to have a central camp (like Dachau), and multiple satellite camps around it. In all, the dachau camp was indirectly responsible for around 72,000 people at the time of its liberation by American troops on April 29, 1945.
In this picture, you can get a rough idea of how many camps there were. Dachau is near the center bottom.
The entrance today is not the entrance they used back when the camp was active, it is more in a corner of the camp. Here is Kelley and Merlin posing by the gate.
The wall of Dachau. Note that there is the outer concrete wall, with watch towers and men with machine guns, an open space, an electified fence, a barbed wire trap at the base, and a fairly deep moat. Plus prisoners were not supposed to go within 10 (?) yards of even this. If they did, they were shot. Guards would typically remove a prisoner's hat and fling it into the 10 yard area and order the prisoner to retrieve it. If he obeyed he was dead. If he didn't he was tortured for disobeying an order.
The camp had 30 bunkers where the prisoners were kept, and of these 6 were used for hospitals, work areas or other uses. Thousands of people were crowded into these boxes.
An Aerial map of dachau
Morry near the end of one bunker (10 meters wide, I believe). Note the concrete bases for the other bunkers behind.
The two reconstructed bunkers. Perhaps 100 meters end to end.
The beds inside the bunkers. 2 men would sleep, head to foot, on mattresses of straw. There are 3 levels of bunks, 3 rows deep.
A common form of torture was tying the hands behind the back, then hanging you from those arms for around 1 hour. Whipping and beating were also common.
When liberated, a pile of corpses was discovered and photographed.
The crematorium, where many of the prisoners where cremated. Although a gas chamber (disguised as a shower) was built on site, investigations show it was never used. They instead prefered to bus their people down to Austria (or deathmarch them) and gas them there.
The slogan of many (or all?) of the concentration camps was Arbeit Macht Frei, or Work makes (you) free. Mocking the prisoners as if they had any chance of freedom.
(this photo is courtesy of
Philip Greenspun,
as our camera refused to take a picture of this gate.)
There is a protestant church, a catholic memorial, a jewish memorial, and a Russian orthodox chapel at dachau, and below is pictured the international memorial stating, in many languages "Never again".
Note: it was not my intent to write an Essay on Dachau. Lots of books exist on the subject, my scanty references and text above are from memory of the tour I took - no numbers were checked nor confirmed. If you are using this to research, please consult a trusted source text. You may use our photos free for personal use, however I hold the copyright otherwise. Please email me and let me know if you use the pictures. Philip's picture has a seperate copyright. Thanks you.
return to index
return to travel
www.theveers.com : last modified Feb 5, 2002 by Morry Veer.