What was dachau used for

Initially the internees consisted primarily of German Communists, Social Democrats, and other political opponents of the Nazi regime. During the early years relatively few Jews were interned in Dachau and usually because they belonged to one of the above groups or had completed prison sentences after being convicted for violating the Nuremberg Laws of In early , the SS , using prisoner labor, initiated construction of a large complex of buildings on the grounds of the original camp.

Prisoners were forced to do this work, starting with the destruction of the old munitions factory, under terrible conditions. The construction was officially completed in mid-August and the camp remained essentially unchanged until Dachau thus remained in operation for the entire period of the Third Reich.

The area in Dachau included other SS facilities beside the concentration camp—a leader school of the economic and civil service, the medical school of the SS, etc. The number of Jewish prisoners at Dachau rose with the increased persecution of Jews and on November , , in the aftermath of Kristallnacht , more than 10, Jewish men were interned there.

Most of men in this group were released after incarceration of a few weeks to a few months. The camp was divided into two sections — the camp area and the crematoria area. The camp area consisted of 32 barracks, including one for clergy imprisoned for opposing the Nazi regime and one reserved for medical experiments. The camp administration was located in the gatehouse at the main entrance. The camp area had a group of support buildings, containing the kitchen, laundry, showers, and workshops, as well as a prison block Bunker.

The courtyard between the prison and the central kitchen was used for the summary execution of prisoners. An electrified barbed-wire fence, a ditch, and a wall with seven guard towers surrounded the camp. In , the crematorium area was constructed next to the main camp. It included the old crematorium and the new crematorium Barrack X with a gas chamber. There is no credible evidence that the gas chamber in Barrack X was used to murder human beings.

Several thousand Dachau prisoners were murdered at Hartheim. Further, the SS used the firing range and the gallows in the crematoria area as killing sites for prisoners. In Dachau, as in other Nazi camps, German physicians performed medical experiments on prisoners, including high-altitude experiments using a decompression chamber, malaria and tuberculosis experiments, hypothermia experiments, and experiments testing new medications.

Prisoners were also forced to test methods of making seawater potable and of halting excessive bleeding. Hundreds of prisoners died or were permanently crippled as a result of these experiments. Prisoners were tortured in other ways as well. For exaample, prisoners would be hung on a tree with their arms strung up behind them to maximize the pain. During these so-called death marches, the Germans shot anyone who could no longer continue; many also died of starvation, hypothermia, or exhaustion.

On April 29, , American forces liberated Dachau. As they neared the camp, they found more than 30 railroad cars filled with bodies brought to Dachau, all in an advanced state of decomposition. In early May , American forces liberated the prisoners who had been sent on the death march.

The number of prisoners who died in the camp and the subcamps between January and May was at least 28, This number does not include those who perished there between and the end of , as well as an unknown number of unregistered prisoners. It is unlikely that the total number of victims who died in Dachau will ever be known. International Dachau Committee.

Marcuse, Harold. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Neurath, Paul. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia.

View the list of all donors. Trending keywords:. Featured Content. Tags Find topics of interest and explore encyclopedia content related to those topics. Browse A-Z Find articles, photos, maps, films, and more listed alphabetically. For Teachers Recommended resources and topics if you have limited time to teach about the Holocaust.

Wise — International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. About This Site. Glossary : Full Glossary. Dachau Between and , Nazi Germany and its allies established more than 44, camps and other incarceration sites including ghettos.

More information about this image. All the Jewish prisoners in Dachau were deported to Auschwitz. In the winter of , SS doctors in the camp started to perform painful medical experiments on the prisoners, which often ended in death. In , a network of auxiliary camps was created at Dachau, their prisoners being used above all for slave labour in the German weapons industry.

Up to 37 people were imprisoned in Dachau. Underground factories were created at the largest complex of auxiliary camps at Landsberg am Lech, with mostly Jewish prisoners being deported from the camps in the east to help build them.

In late and early , some 30 prisoners worked there under deadly conditions. Prisoners liberated in Dachau. In the main camp too, conditions at the end of the war were horrendous. Dachau was unbearably overcrowded as a result of the influx of prisoners evacuated from the camps that were being closed ahead of the Allied advance.

Thousands of prisoners fell victim to a typhus epidemic. On the 29th of April , 30 thousand prisoners at the camp were liberated by US army units without any fighting. Monument on the site of the former concentration camp. The Dachau Gas Chambers. An essay by Harry W. Concentration camps are opened across the Reich to facilitate the mass imprisonment of political opponents. The Dachau concentration camp is one of these early sites. On March 22 , the first prisoner transports arrive at the camp set up on the grounds of a disused gunpowder and munitions factory.

The camp commandant, Theodor Eicke, introduces a system in October that includes brutal punishment rules for the prisoners and duty orders for the camp SS. The regulations institutionalize SS rule over the prisoners that is characterized by tyranny and terror. The first prisoner transport in a bus arrives at the gatehouse of the former factory grounds Municipal archives Munich. The role of the SS in this massacre contributes decisively to its rise in power.

SS units take charge of other concentration camps up until now guarded by the SA. Heinrich Himmler l. In Adolf Hitler decides to utilize the concentration camp system as a permanent instrument of political terror and extend its scope. This paves the way for promulgating a permanent state of emergency and installing despotic rule by the Gestapo Geheime Staatspolizei and SS under Heinrich Himmler.