Hitler's vision of horror was alive and well in Dachau: the barracks, the ovens, the electrical barbed wire fences remained intact. Imagine this if you will, a mound of 10,000 rotting corpses lie on one side of you while on the other side is yet a mound of 12,000 more. The place was like hell on earth. Waking up to the sickly smell of burning flesh and hair which probably carried all the way to Munich with only the slightest breeze, yet the villagers claimed they had no idea what was going on.

     Dachau concentration camp was the first concentration camp built in Germany. On March 20, 1933, Henrich Himmler announced at a press conference the establishment of Dachau concentration camp. The very next day the press announced: "On Wednesday, the first concentration camp will be established in the neighborhood of Dachau..." The camp was built to detain political undesirables. The head commander of Dachau was Theodor Eiche under Henrich Himmler's direction. Nobody knew that it would be the ideal training ground of murder, that is for the SS. Dachau started because prisons were overflowing with people the government didn't like. They had little money for another prison so they built camps like Dachau. Dahcau is huge. It would take a hour to walk all the way around the grounds. March 22,1933 marks the date when the first prisoners were hauled in. On the way in they read the words on the gate "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" which means work

makes one free. Not only Jews were killed, it also included Jehovah Witnesses, gypsies, homosexuals, and POW's. Dachau was meant to hold nomore than 5,000 people at a time. 206,206 people were

registered who either died of disease or mass killings.  A recorded 31,591 people were murdered at Dachau, but an estimated 50,000 people perished unrecorded. On the night of Kristallnacht more than 10,000 Jews arrived after being arrested for so called crimes. What were their crimes? Having a religion different than Hitler's.

     Life as a prisoner in the concentration camp began with the arrival at the camp. The SS had a cruel ritual of their "welcome". They wanted to make sure that they instilled fear and dread onto them and to make it clear to their prisoners that their legal status was gone. More and more insults were brought upon them: their remaining possessions were taken from them, their hair was shaved off and they were put into different garments. They all had a number and a colored triangle indicating which category they belonged to. Their name and existence had disappeared, now they were just another number. Their daily routine was filled with hard labor, hunger, exhaustion, and fear of being beaten or even killed. Prisoners worked on everything form basketry to wrought iron work. They also had to take care of the camp. While the camp was being enlarged from 1939-1940, prisoners had to work extremely hard at an exhausting pace seven days a week to satisfy the SS commanders. Prisoners were often pushed to their deaths deliberately. Many prisoners fell victum to what is called "annihilation through work".

     In 1942 the main office of the SS economic section was told that they had to have an inspection of the camp. The office tried to make certain improvements in order the lower the high death rate. At the same time the systematic killing of "inferior races" began in the extermination camps. The SS then asked for as many save workers as possible so that they wouldn't get caught for the mass extermination of the prisoners.

     By the end of the war the SS behavior towards the prisoners lightened up a little. The prisoners, weak and undernourished, had to work 11 hours a day. The walk to and from work was often hard, so the prisoners got very little sleep. Prisoners who fell ill were sent to the main camp, this usually meant death. Prisoners often had very little or no money for the canteen where in the first few years they were able to buy a few things, but of course at very high prices. Hunger definitely played a huge role in the daily struggle to stay alive.

     There were many different kinds of punishments. Detention in the camp prison was where they were chained to the wall without their rations. Particularly favored punishments were the "punishment drills" which meant working during their free time, or endless "roll calls". Every morning all the prisoners had to form up in the square according to the barracks while there numbers were called out. This usually lasted about an hour.

     On January 23,1938, a prisoner escaped from the camp. the remaining prisoners had to stand in the roll call square the whole night. It was snowing. Many prisoners collapsed and died during the night.

     The chief cause of death was disease, above all, typhus, a disease that flourished here populations were crowded in places where health measures were either unknown or had broken down.  Sanitation in Germany was at a low grade, the food supply and food distribution was poor. Most of the thousands of people who died at Dachau wasn't because of Germans deliberately starving their prisoners, but because of

the diseases.  The SS did not want to finance the medical and nursing care of the prisoners. The camp leader decided whether or not a prisoner was sick and should be allowed to see a doctor.  A prisoner was not permitted to be

absent from work until his temperature rose above 104F when he or she could no longer stand up. With few exceptions the SS doctors did not treat the prisoners. Many people were injured at work because of the absence of safety precautions. This often led to crippling or death. In addition many prisoners suffered frost bite in the winter because of the little clothing that they had. In the summer, many suffered from working hours unprotected from the sun's rays. In the last four months Proceeding the liberation of Dachau over 13,000 prisoners died.

     Did gassing actually occur at Dachau? A US army photo depicts a GI looking at a steel door marked with a skull and cross bones and the German words for "Caution! Mortal Danger! Don't open!" The question is 

still around today, did prisoners at Dachau camp actually perish in the gas chambers? Many think not. They believe that the first chamber was just a delousing chamber for clothes. The second gas chamber is still uncertain, this one was cunningly disguised as a shower room. Was this a room where thousands breathed their last or not? While numerous reports on the function of the shower heads, they still don't know. Were they dummies, or did the lethal cyanide gas stream through them?

     During the last few weeks before the liberation, the prisoners had to live under inhuman conditions, a condition to which they thought to be impossible. The huge transports were continuously arriving from the camps. The allies had found human beings who were reduced to a skeleton and exhausted from death. From each railway carriage it was necessary to remove all the corpses of those who had died en route. Daily over 100 people died of typhus which had been an extreme problem since December 1944. There was little medicine to help them so it was impossible the control the epidemic.

     Every day the prisoners saw Allies, bombers in the sky, and yet they had not bombed the town of Dachau. What was the SS going to do with the 30,000 prisoners? Were they planning to kill them all before the Allies could come? After the war the answer turned out to be yes. They had planned to kill the inmates of the concentration camp by bombs and poison. Himmler had commanded that no prisoner would fall into the hands of the Allies, and that the camp must be evacuated immediately. The prisoners who had been working loosely together decided to organize an underground camp committee to make sure they stayed alive and if necessary organize  resistance against the SS plans of action.

     On April 26, the secret committee sent two prisoners from the camp and find their way to the American troops whose approach could be heard by the roar of the guns. They were to ask them to come to Dachau as soon as possible. The prisoners were successful and two days later the Americans, who had originally planned to capture Munich first, arrived in Dachau.

     On that same day the SS plan went into action. The SS guards demanded that 7,000 prisoners walk south. The march was hard. Hundreds were shot as soon as they could no longer walk. The American troops took over these columns in the beginning of May. Only then did the SS guards start to fight. Only two days before the liberation of the camp the innocent people fell victim to their death.

     On Sunday April 29, 1945 sporadic shots rang out. Shortly after, the words "We are free!" resounded and spread throughout the camp like

wild fire in all languages. The prisoners of  Dachau concentration camp were liberated and a new life was beginning.      "We must never forget the Holocaust" as Hugo Gryn told Martin Gilbert. Even today we stand-by while innocent lives are taken.
	Wherever genocide occurs one thing is sure to happen, individual lives become lost in massive numbers and, in most part, the reality becomes unbelievable.

  Researched by
"Hailey Jo" Hoobler

     Resources used:
1.) Grolier 1999
2.) The Liberation of Camps-- Facts vs. Lies: www.codoh.com/infoihr/ihr5liberate.html
3.) Dachau Concentration Camp:
www.photo.net/bp/dachau.html
4.) L'Chaim : a holocaust webpage: www.charm.net/~rbennet/l'chaim.html