Talk:Dachau concentration camp

An event in this article is a April 29 selected anniversary. (may be in HTML comment)

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Cremation chamber

The cremation chamber at Dachau could not keep up with the cremation of 30,000 people over 13 years.

Yet, we are expected to believe the cremation chambers at Auschwitz and other "death camps" cremated 12 million in the space of 3 years?

This is typical Holocaust-denial rhetoric — conflate some facts into a ridiculous assertion, disprove that "fact", and then generalize to "debunk" the whole enchilada.

The "12 million" figure is for the total number of victims of Nazi genocide / eugenics / racial "purification", NOT just for those who were cremated. Did anyone claim that the 100,000 victims killed in the ravine at Babi Yar outside Kiev, for example, were passed through some kind of crematorium? Of course not!

Maybe a quarter of the total figure were gassed and burned... millions more were shot, starved, and beaten to death. And their bodies were often disposed of in lime pits, or burned in open-air pyres, leaving little trace.

And if you concede that "only" even a million or so — a million human beings; a humane person's mind boggles — were cremated in the ovens designed specifically for that purpose, and no other, would that make it any less horrific?!!

I mean, let's take this supposed claim that the "only" reason that the concentration / extermination camps had crematoria was to dispose of all of the people dying of disease or starvation, then let's ask ourselves this question: What's right about packing people into camps in the first place where you plan that they will die of disease or starvation? Isn't that already so sick and cruel that it beggars the imagination? Or are these Holocaust-deniers so blasé that the idea of crowding people into camps with no room and too little food, and forcing them to work themselves to death, is just "business as usual"?

To me, anyone who isn't sickened at the very thought "has lost their membership card in the human race." --Eliyahu S ^Talk 02:37, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I find that almost hysterical, if it weren't so sad.

No-one claims that the cremation chambers at Auschwitz and the other death camps cremated 12 million; that's just another Strawman argument from Holocaust deniers. Jayjg 19:15, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It is claimed in this article -- laughably -- that those two small ovens incinerated "30,000 victims."

Will the Holocaust Mythologizers NEVER get tired of these canards? ITMotors 15:45, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

OK, I'll bite: Exactly how many ovens do you think it would take to incinerate 30,000 bodies over the space of four years? Nine? Forty-one? Three hundred million? Hell, given two man-sized ovens and an army of enthusiastically racist assistants, I'll bet that even a completely incompetent mass-murderer could make a pretty good go of it.

The human body doesn't take all that long to burn, especially at temperatures the Kremas reached. Here's an experiment for you: go put a fresh side of beef in a common mortuary crematorium, then pull it out after an episode of Hannity & Colmes and see how it looks. A group of blokes shoveling bodies into "those two small ovens" all day isn't going to take very long to get through 30,000 victims. Even if you assume a burn time of as much as one hour per body (it's probably closer to 20-30 minutes), it would take just under 3-1/2 years, working around the clock (which the Nazis are known to have done) in two simultaneously operating ovens, to get through 30,000 victims. Allow for Sundays and holidays off, and you're sitting at right around four years.

At any rate, the Nazis' own records indicate that "those two small ovens" incinerated 30,000 people between 1941 and 1945, so there really isn't much of a debate to be had here. Microtonal 05:45, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Not sure how relevant this is, but according to the sign next to the ovens they would each hold 2 or 3 people.

You also have to keep in mind, that the original crematorium was replaced by a larger one with 4 ovens by April 1943, which at least doubled the (theoretical) capacity. The above stated time needed for incineration (20-30min) is also claimed in several documentations on this subject on TV about the KZ in Auschwitz and is thus likely to apply to the Dachau KZ crematorium as well. The sign next to the old crematorium in Auschwitz states, that from its construction in summer 1940 until its closure in April 1943 some 11.000 inmates have been incinerated in it (with only 2 ovens) (http://www.hdbg.de/dachau/pdfs/17/17_08/17_08_03.PDF). So i think it's very likely, that the 30.000 stated above could have been incinerated. Hammel2303 19:24, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

You can not cremate bodies 24/7, 52 weeks a year in an oven. The actual German written records (not a TV show)for cremating a body at Auschwitz is 1 to 1 & half hours per body- more if more bodies are added. Secondly, the ovens needed to be cleaned which took approx. 1/6 of the time. Thirdly, the liners of the ovens had to be replaced periodically, @ every 20 days use, & this was a major operation causing considerable downtime & lastly there was normal repairs to the ovens. Turns out the Auschwitz maximum 17 ovens were only cremating bodies 50% of the time (doesn't include individual construction time for each oven - only from the oven's operational date). Another check is to compare the actual fuel & maintenance supply records to confirm the figures.

Your argument doesn't pan out - if Dachau couldn't do 30,000 then 12,000,000 would take take 400 ovens +- - but certainly more than they had available no matter how you work the numbers. Secondly Dachau had 13 years - the Polish camps had months - couple of years at most. Ouch159.105.80.141 18:49, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

RE:above mentions lime to dispose of the bodies - actually lime is anti-microbial - it preserves the bodies ( helps keep down the smell of decomposition ). Any pits would be great forensic sites. 159.105.80.141 (talk) 11:16, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Gas Chambers

From Friedrich Paul Berg's website http://www.codoh.com/gcgv/gcdelouse.html:

TODAY AT THE FORMER German concentration camp at Dachau, it is no longer claimed that Jews or anyone else were ever killed in the gas chamber there. In the room that is supposedly a gas chamber, one can clearly read a sign written by the museum authorities in five languages which says, "THE GAS CHAMBER disguised as a 'shower room'-never used as a gas chamber." Although the room was completed in 1942, it was never used for its intended purpose-presumably, it was used for other purposes; perhaps it was used as a shower room after all.

At the western end of the crematorium building which houses the so-called gas chamber "disguised as a shower room," one can today see and walk through four delousing chambers which were used to fumigate clothing.2 The only explanation regarding these chambers is a sign above them, also in five languages, which simply says "Fumigation cubicles" in English and Desinfektionskammern in German. There is no mention anywhere within the camp of the important fact that these chambers used Zyklon-B to fumigate clothing as well as other articles placed within the chambers.

The "shower room" is not a gas chamber at all, but the so-called "fumigation cubicles" are gas chambers. Moreover, the "fumigation cubicles " are extremely well-designed gas chambers which represented, and may still represent, the state of the art in gas chamber design. They were the product of more than 20 years of research and development into the application of hydrocyanic acid (often referred to simply as cyanide) for the extermination of vermin. This is clearly shown by the extensive German technical literature from the end of World War I through World War II on this subject.

Indeed, the fumigation chambers were not used for extermination of human beings at Dachau. Proskauer 14:26, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I can verify that, as per my visit, the 'fumigation cubicles' were strictly for clothing and luggage. They are generally the size and shape of a large shower, but they are distinctly different from the 'shower room'. I suspect there may be some confusion over this.

The actual 'shower room' may not be a proper gas chamber, but it is better designed to be a gas chamber than it is to be a shower. This significantly larger room includes mailbox-like slots such that chemicals -- I assume Zyklon-B -- could be deposited into the room from outside. On the other hand, the 'showers' are not spray heads, nor are they placed in such a way as to facilitate 'showering'. There is little doubt in my mind that this room was NOT a shower.

The documents on site do claim that no prisoners were killed in the shower room. True or not, a large many of them were simply shot a few hundred feet away. In summary, it appears true that the 'gas chambers' (fumigation cubicles) were not used for executions -- by design. The 'shower room' seems to have been designed as a large gas chamber, although historians believe it was never placed into operation. --Mdwyer 22:25, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Wow, a Holocaust denial website claiming that gas chambers weren't used to kill Jews. Quelle surprise. Please use reliable sources. Jayjg ^(talk) 16:36, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles should not depend on primary sources but rather on reliable secondary sources who have made careful use of the primary-source material. Most primary-source material requires training to use correctly, especially on historical topics.

The citations to these sources should be provided in the article? Proskauer 06:12, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Holocaust denial websites are not reliable sources, pretty much by definition. So no, citations should not be provided in the article. Microtonal 13:49, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

How and who decided that after all these years of propaganda that Dachau didn't have gas chambers after all? Is there a source or link as to how the plaque was changed out of the blue?

http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/camps/dachau/gas-chamber.html This should be addressed in the article. Apokrif 15:31, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

A camp that never had gas chambers - except for delousing - is slyly portrayed as one that did. Are you calling all the pro-Holocaust historians a bunch of liars? I believe they have conceded that Dauchau was not an extermination camp.

One reliable source - used by this article and many others as an approved site - still says gas chambers at Dachau. Such a good story - they have photos too - that they can't give it up, even if everyone knows it isn't true. How does scrapbookpages keep its good standing with wiki?159.105.80.141 19:34, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Dr Franciszek Blaha was the only witness who every testified about gas chambers at Dachau - experimental. Dr Blaha also testified to skinning - duress I hope - to make slippers, pants, other clothing ( he didn't make lampshades, he was more original ). Why don't we feature Blaha - our only witness? If you want a gas chamber, he is your man - actually your only man.159.105.80.141 19:58, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

scrapbookpages.com has the most recent information about the Dachau gas chambers. The Memorial site at Dachau is controlled by the "Committee of Dachau," which was an organization of the prisoners in the camp in the last days before the camp was liberated. This committee is still in existence and the committee still controls what is told to visitors at the Memorial site. When the new Museum opened in 2003, the sign that said "the gas chamber was never used" was removed. Now there is information on the wall of the undressing room which says that the gas chamber was used a few times. Geseke too tambien also (talk) 14:16, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Liberation

Why is information on the Liberation of this camp being removed. The mission of Wikipedia is to "Provide information" not to gloss over horrible peices of history. To present one side as 'Good', and one side as 'evil' is an oversimplification. The execution of unarmmed POWs is historicaly significant, What is the justification for excluding this? Isn't the true horror of the Holocaust the way that seemingly 'normal' people were made to do such acts of evil; the liberation story is the ultimate and final example of this.

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The Americans found 32,000 prisoners, dying slowly and crammed 1600 to each of 200 barracks, which had been designed to house 250 people each. The US troops also found 39 railroad cars, each filled with one hundred or more corpses.

Minor mathematical error- 1600 x 200 = 320,000 not 32,000. Either the number per barrack is wrong, the number of barracks is wrong, or the total population of the camp is wrong.

The 200 number for the barracks is probably in error. From the aerial photographs, the number of barracks is more likely 20, which resolves the problem. --Eliyahu S ^Talk 23:48, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Would someone please check an authoritative source and correct?

Except for those that were sick, the rest looked anything but "dying". The photos of them killing German prisoners look like pretty healthy bloks.

This issue is resolved by reading through some of the explanations about the confusion of who liberated Dachau? From there it is clear that there were many sub-camps, all called "Dachau camp", throughout the area of the town of Dachau. In some of them, the eyewitness accounts make clear, the healthiest prisoners had been evacuated from the main camp (inside the SS training compound) to continue their work on behalf of the Nazi war effort. It is likely these prisoners, many of them perhaps newer inmates at the camp, who were capable of attacking their former captors. My father was liberated from Bergen-Belsen, having started his internment at Auschwitz, where most of his family was killed, weighing at that time only 43 kilos (95 pounds). (When he weighs twice that he looks fit, and he's a bit pudgy today at 220 - he just turned 80.) He attributes his survival following the chaos during the liberation to the fact that he and two fellows roamed from the camp and found a pig, which they killed and tore apart with their bare hands, to eat raw. (They were subsequently hospitalized for trichinosis, which got them better care in the British field hospital than the majority of prisoners, who were simply starving to death.) Anyway, a person having been starved to a walking skeleton was able to tear apart a live pig, barehanded, so I have no problem with visualizing a mob of starving people killing the soldiers who had imprisoned, tortured, and killed them for years. --Eliyahu S ^Talk 00:06, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I have read that the dead in the railroad cars had been strafed by US fighter planes. 159.105.80.141 18:31, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Oskar Müller

Just wanted to make sure there wasn't a typo or anything: the name Oskar Müller occurs twice in the article, once as the last head of the camp, and later as a communist held at the camp. func(talk) 01:29, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Oskar Müller was the inmate that the Americans put in charge of the camp after liberation. There are documents in the Humaities.org link related to him, follow the external links section.

If so, it should be made clear that he was no Nazi officer. --Error 23:56, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Extra

This isn't noteworthy enough to be in the article by a long shot, but in case you're ever going to have a section with literature et cetera on the Dachau concentration camp, Captain Beefheart once made a song about it called Dachau Blues. Its lyrics can be found here: [1] --Michiel Sikma 17:46, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Notable Prisoners

Should the children of Archduke Franz Ferdinand also be included as notable prisoners? It is, to many, quite surprising that Austrian nobility was sent to concentration camps.--85.49.234.93 22:59, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

If you have a source for it, that's certainly notable enough to add to the list. Microtonal 06:07, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Homosexuals

There is no mention of the fact that Dachau was the first of the camps where the Nazis conducted "scientific" experiments on homosexuals, in order to carry out Himmler's policy of "eradicating" the "vice". I remember this vividly coming across when I visited the camp's exhibition centre. [2], [3], [4]. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dermod (talk • contribs) 05:05, 17 February 2006 UTC.

There isn't much discussion at all about what actually went on in the camp. It's mostly just a description of the Kremas and a list of people who were there. The whole article needs to be expanded at least a little bit, I think. I don't have the appropriate resources to do so, though. Microtonal 11:27, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Post Nuremberg

I can't see anything that notes Dachau acted as the crematorium for the Allies of noteable Nazi's post the Nuremberg trials? High Nazi's such as Jodl were cremated at Dachau - Rgds, Trident13 14:03, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

This might be a good lead as to how long it took Germans to cremate a body - some clerk probably wrote all this down in great gory detail. Run quick and destroy the record - wait look at it first.

Images

I've added some images from my most recent vacation to Germany and Dachau. I feel they added some a more rounded look at the highlights of the camp.j_lechem@msn.com 17:14, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

I've been fiddling with ways to distribute the current crop of images around the article, and I have come to the conclusion that there are simply too many pictures. In particular, I don't think that Image:Dachau-001.JPG or Image:Dachau-040.jpg are really contributing much of anything to the article itself. Would anyone object if I were to remove these two, and spread the others a little more evenly around the article? Maybe they could be moved to a "more images" gallery at the bottom of the page. Microtonal 23:44, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

The mayor and his wife

The information in this article dovetails with a biography of Patton which I read 40+ years ago --Ancheta Wis 10:09, 21 March 2006 (UTC):

• When Patton saw the Dachau concentration camp, he retched. He then ordered the MPs (Military Police) to escort a Mayor (of a nearby community) and his wife to view the camp. The Mayor and his wife were so ashamed of what they saw that they later committed suicide.

Committed suicide for what reason? Maybe all their family was dead from the war - this assumes a lot ( it actually assumes they felt bad about Jews being dead - I thought the whole message was that the Germans hated the Jews, I am getting confused by the back and forth, pick a stance and stay there.

Well... I agree the first post does rather assume. I'd noticed the tendentious point about the suicide before (I appreciate the poster was just passing it on). There are a few reasons why people in that position might commit suicide, including being widely held to be complicit in atrocity. This would be whether they were complicit or not. So 'ashamed?'. I think the truth is... who knows. What I didn't know until looking into the chronology recently was that the interaction of the camp and the surrounding community was rather less simple than I'd heard. Hakluyt bean 17:28, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

General Patton did not visit the Dachau camp. On April 12, 1945 Patton visited the Ohrdruf sub-camp of Buchenwald where he threw up his lunch after seeing dead bodies in a shed. General Walton Walker was the one who ordered the people of the nearby town of Ohrdruf to visit the camp to see the bodies. After this visit, the mayor of Ohrdruf and his wife went back home and committed suicide. The mayor and his wife were among the hundreds of Germans who allegedly killed themselves near the end of the war and just after the German surrender. Some of these alleged suicides might have been murder committed by released prisoners who wanted revenge on the Germans. Geseke too tambien also (talk) 20:14, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Extermination camp vs Concentration camp

Is there a formal definition of the difference between these two? The Wikipedia "Extermination camp" entry does NOT list Dachau. It says there were six camps, all in Poland.

--JohnFlaherty 08:55, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

In fact none of the camps did strictly belong to exclusively one category, as even in Auschwitz-Birkenau there were people incarcerated while there were also large scale extermination efforts in the camps dubbed work camps by the Germans. Overall, most of the camps did promote Extermination through labour, though not all were extermination camps as such. //Halibutt 10:40, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Okay, then should the "Extermination camp" entry be edited to reflect Dachau? Take a look at it. It says there were only six camps, all in Poland.--JohnFlaherty 11:06, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Anybody?--JohnFlaherty 12:23, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

This is my third pimping of Britannica in 3 edits but anyway; it has Dachau as a concentration camp, as distinct from being an extermination camp, to which (it implies specifically for the purpose of extermination) Jewish prisoners were sent from Dachau. There seems a clear distinction there: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9028484 --Hakluyt bean

Okay. Thanks. I just wanted to make sure.--JohnFlaherty 20:25, 8 June 2006 (UTC) Some years back it was begrudging admitted that there had been no gas chambers on German soil. By magic the whole operation moved to Poland overnight. Next it will be...., hold it there is no next - in Poland we stand and fight.

The term "extermination camp" or Vernichtungslager in German was originated by the Allies. The Nazis did not call any of their camps by this name. The Allies called all of the camps in Germany "extermination camps." It has only been recently that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum designated six camps as extermination camps, meaning a camp where Jews were sent to be deliberately killed in gas chambers. Geseke too tambien also (talk) 20:20, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Figures

From the article:

Dachau was also used for extermination purposes. Camp records list 30,000 persons killed in the camp, with thousands more who died due to the conditions in the camp

This doesn't appear to be accurate. See Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9028484 -

Incomplete records indicate that at least 32,000 of the inmates died there from disease, malnutrition, physical oppression, and execution, but countless more were transported to the extermination camps in Poland.

Hakluyt bean

The word "killed" is probably not totally correct. Execution and physical oppression would mean "killed" but probably any research would have disease as the main culprit.

The Museum at Dachau uses the term "murder" or "killed" for all the deaths at Dachau, including those who died of disease. This is based on the assumption that they would not have died if they had not been in the camp. After the camp was liberated, a sign was put up near the crematorium which said "238,756 people were cremated here." The American liberators had confiscated the camp records, but the records were later turned over to the Red Cross; the records showed 31,951 deaths out of 206,206 registered prisoners. The Museum at the Memorial Site now says that there were around 41,000 deaths at Dachau. Geseke too tambien also (talk) 14:34, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Political nature of the camp

Britannica, http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9028484 (same link as above):

The composition of the inmates reflected the Nazis' changing choice of victims. The first inmates were Social Democrats, Communists, and other political prisoners. Throughout its existence, Dachau remained a “political camp,” in which political prisoners retained a prominent role. Later victims included Roma (Gypsies) and homosexuals, as well as Jehovah's Witnesses. Jews were brought to Dachau after Kristallnacht in November 1938. Initially, Jews could be freed if they had a way out of Germany. When the systematic killing of Jews began in 1942, many were sent from Dachau to the extermination camps. Dachau received Jews again after the “death marches” of the winter of 1944–45. These marches, following the forcible evacuation of the extermination camps, were one of the final phases of the Holocaust.

From the official Dachau Memorial site: http://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/englisch/frame/geschichte.htm

After the Anschluß (annexation or connection) with Austria in the spring of 1938, Austrian prisoners were deported to Dachau, while in the same year prisoners from the Sudeten German areas followed, in March 1939 came Czech prisoners, and after the start of the war prisoners from Poland, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France etc. The German prisoners eventually became a minority; the largest national group was formed by the Polish prisoners, followed by prisoners from the Soviet Union.

The article seems to gloss over this and leaves the impression that with the exception of Jewish prisoners and (possibly?) other religious prisoners the composition of the camp was fairly random. By comparison from the article:

"In total, over 200,000 prisoners from more than 30 countries were housed in Dachau" while worth noting, doesn't really shed much light. It's actually just the last line from the Memorial site quote.

Hakluyt bean

Gosh I don't like this 200,000 number. The normal death rate over this period - and add in a typhus epidemic - and 30,000 deaths looks like normal attrition. The Japanese camps in the USA had about the same %. Rats, we need a total rewrite.

Erm, I'm glad someone reads this page besides me atm, but I don't get the anonymous comment above, sarcasm? Position seems to be (and the article doesn't reflect this) that the camp was open for 12 years, is documented as housing in total 200,000 people, and is documented as having 30,000 deaths. Among these were some Russian prisoners of war certainly executed. Hakluyt bean 18:21, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Guessing that prisoners were not immortal - lived about 70 years each. Then a city or camp of 200,000 would have natural deaths in the 30,000 range. These prisoners appear to have been safer than if they were Germans living in Berlin.

Those 200,000 were the total number of registered prisoners who passed through the camp. There were 37,000 in the camp in April 1945. Because of the transports of prisoners from the front it was overcowded at that time. (Source: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/dachau.html)ALu06 13:27, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

There is some very bad math here. Average mortality rates for people in this age bracket (median age, say, 30-40, at most) was something like 200-400 per 100,000 per year. Moreover there were certainly not 200,000 prisoners in the camp for its entire 12 years of operation. There's no way that natural deaths account for even 10% of the 30,000 deaths, even if you stretch the figures. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.231.179.59 (talk) 09:45, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

The Dachaulied

German Wikipedia has a short article on the Dachaulied, "song of Dachau" written by two prisoners. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachaulied . Anybody care to translate this over to English Wikipedia? Thanks. -- 201.78.233.162 22:13, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

It's featured in the article on the satirist Jura Soyfer, co-composer of the song. Should probably be in the article, but then so should many things.... :)

Hakluyt bean 22:41, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Chronology

As alluded to in one of my above posts I think the article's lacking a chronology of events at the camp. Anyone mind if I add one/shuffle the article around? Hakluyt bean 18:23, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. --Guinnog 18:24, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Gas chambers in Dachau were never used for murder

In spite what the photo says, and so the camp was not "also used for extermination purposes."

http://www.holocaust-history.org/dachau-gas-chambers/

Someone correct this. --HanzoHattori 17:36, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd say that the translation of "War nicht in Betrieb" to "Never used as gas chamber" is incorrect in this image:

http://www.holocaust-history.org/dachau-gas-chambers/photo.cgi?25

A better translation is "Was not in use", which is (purposefully?) ambiguous: Does it mean that it was never used? Does it mean that when the liberating US army arrived, the gas chamber wasn't in use? The answers to both those questions cannot be given, as the original german in that image is similarly obtuse. --84.72.122.161 (talk) 06:23, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

When the American liberators arrived, the prisoners took them to the Baracke X building where the undressing room had soap and towels and fresh flowers on a table. This indicates that the gas chamber was in use and the Germans had taken great pains to fool the victims into thinking that they were going to take a shower. Otherwise, why not use the waiting room, the undressing room and the gas chamber room, to store some of the dead bodies. There were dead bodies in the morgue room and the autopsy room and a big pile of bodies outside the building. There was no running water in the camp on the day of the liberation, so why were they pretending that there was a shower room in the Baracke X building. Geseke too tambien also (talk) 14:53, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

wrong wrong wrong

I am an Australian who has been to this particular camp when i was in Munich two months ago.

I paid close attention to all information available at the facility and can say that this camp WAS used for genocide, Dachau featured two crematoriums (which ceased operation due to a coal shortage's in the late 30's and early 40's) mass graves were used as an alternative and one gas chamber, which is not the ones seen in the photo on the bottom right had side of the article it was a single "showering room" that could house 20 people at a time. The prisoners that were killed were killed because they were deemed unfit due to malnutrition hence MURDER. The authorities that govern Dachau today (who have no interest in "flowering up" what took place there) formally recognises 200 moralities over the 3rd Reich era. whist nobody will ever know the TRUE toll, the figures mentioned are quite ridiculous.

You missed a significant point. Dachau's GAS CHAMBERS were never used for genocide. They DID cremate corpses there, and they probably did gas-disinfect clothes and personal belongings. But according to what we know today they did not gas people. They shot them, starved them, and worked them to death, but they did not use the infamous 'shower rooms'. Not at this particular camp, at least. --Mdwyer 21:54, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Actual Use of the Gas Chambers

It is almost certain that the fumigation or disinfestation chambers were used for their designed purpose. (...) With the new crematorium a gas chamber was also connected. The whole construction of the crematorium with its gas chamber was completed in 1943. It contained an 'undressing room', a 'shower bath', and a 'mortuary'. The showers were metal traps which had no pipelines for a supply of poisonous gas. This gas chamber was never set in action in Dachau. Only the dead were brought to the crematorium for 'burning', no living for 'gassing'. There is also considerable evidence that at least 3,166 prisoners were sent to Hartheim Castle in Linz. Here they were quickly put to death in the small gas chamber originally used to destroy the mentally retarded and handicapped. (...) Having established that the large gas chamber was indeed a homicidal chamber, little other evidence, apart from Rascher's letter, had surfaced to confirm its actual use on human beings. [5] --HanzoHattori 10:55, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

An excerpt from 1st. Lt. William Cowling eyewitness account of the Dachau liberation, including both the official military report and his personal letter to home, respectively:

An Associated Press reporter and another reporter requested permission from General Linden to go through the camp on an inspection. General Linden consented and offered to accompany the two reporters. Lt. Cowling and one of the guards went through with the General and the two reporters. The major who had been a prisoner provided a guard for the party. The first place the group visited was a large yard in which piles of assorted clothing were stacked. In one pile was shoes, in another pants, and so on. We were then shown a room which looked something similar to a reception room, and off it was another room with the marking "Showers" on it. Actually it was a gas chamber used by the Germans to kill the prisoners. The camp also contained four large ovens in which the bodies were cremated.

The reporter, incidentally, is elsewhere identified as Marguerite Higgins, a reporter with the New York Herald Tribune. Here is the excerpt from Cowling's personal letter, supposedly posted the next day, from the same web page:

Another door with the word showers lead off of this and upon going through this room it appeared to be a shower room but instead of water, gas came out and in two minutes the people were dead. Next we went next door to four large ovens where they cremated the dead. Then we were taken to piles of dead. There were from two to fifty people in a pile all naked, starved and dead. There must have been about 1,000 dead in all.

And here is an excerpt from "Chicago Daily Times," the headlines of April 30, 1945, quoted here:

Almost 100 naked bodies were stacked neatly in the barren room with cement floors (the mortuary). They had come from a room on the left marked "shower bath."

REALLY A GAS CHAMBER

It really was a gas chamber, a low-ceilinged room about 30 feet square. After 15 or 20 persons were inside the doors were firmly sealed and the faucets were turned on and poison gas issued. Then the bodies were hauled into a room separating the gas chamber from the crematorium. There were four ovens with a huge flue leading to a smoke-blackened stack.

Outside this building were tens of thousands of articles of clothing stacked in orderly piles.

If this was a story that was "made up" later, as some claim, then why are there so many primary source accounts from the immediate time period of the incident? Were they all making up the same story then, in hopes that the U.S. Army would, in the future, install the gas chambers there, as some people claim?

And then there is this photo of American Congressman inspecting the gas chambers ... just 4 days later! Was this "hoax" created in a couple of days, while the final incursion to Munich and the German surrender was still happening?!!

A seemingly balanced article questions whether what was clearly a homicidal gas chamber, as opposed to the other four chambers that were clearly for disinfecting articles, and notes that "Any doubts that this chamber is a gas chamber are rapidly dispelled upon viewing the exhaust vents on the ceiling of the room <photo 31>, the exhaust chimney on the roof <photo 32>, and the metal doors that are identical in design to those used by the disinfestation gas chambers <photo 33> <photo 34>. It would appear that the fake shower heads on the ceiling of the chamber <photo 35>, the sign over the door stating Brausebad (shower room) <photo 36> and the smooth brick finish simulating tiling (see <photo 41> below) were part of an elaborate ploy to make the victims believe they were going to take a bath after having deposited their clothes in the passageway connecting the disinfestation chambers with the homicidal chamber." and then concludes the article as follows (emphasis mine):

Neither the reports by the U.S. Army, Father Hess nor Sack prove conclusively that the homicidal chamber was used to kill people. Until further evidence is discovered, historians will have to conform [comfort? - Eliyahu] themselves with the knowledge that it was technically possible to have murdered human beings with poison gas in that room, and that the room, some 16x16x12ft high, was designed for the exclusive purpose of carrying out such a grim task. This circumstance does not free the perpetrators of their crimes. No matter in what manner the tens of thousands of unfortunate people in Dachau lost their lives, they were murdered as surely as if they had been placed in a gas chamber and asphyxiated with hydrogen cyanide gas. The intentional destruction of human life by whatever means is still murder. It is quite sufficient, for the moment, to demonstrate that the Nazis intended to use a homicidal gas chamber in Dachau, and that they designed, built and equipped such a chamber in the Dachau Concentration Camp.

And additionally I'd like to note that, in a well organized extermination effort there wouldn't be many (if any) bodies who'd died of gas, waiting to be "forensically examined". (One Holocaust-denial claim is that it couldn't have happened bexause there were no bodies found to have been poisoned -- I'm just too sick of readin their lies for the past few hours to dredge up more links.) An efficient operation would only gas as many people a a time as their bodies could be disposed of, so there would only be any "in process" bodies between the gas chambers and the crematoria. And when the operation was closed down, as the bulk of the SS troops fled ahead of the Allies (in this case, the Americans,) they would have just not gassed another batch, burned the ones they did, and leave behind only corpses of typhus victims which kept piling up after the operations had ceased ... continuing to pile them up near the ovens because that's where they'd put them all along. So even in a hypothetical case, we must accept the axiom that absence of proof is not proof of absence, and so saying that there isn't some particular kind of evidence doesn't disprove that events happened, anyway.

--Eliyahu S ^Talk 02:11, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

A liitle note on the construction the gas chamber and second crematoria

The Gas chamber and crematorium (Baracke X)was built just outside the prisoner compound at Dachau but within the area of the SS Kaserne. At Wannsee it was decided that all camps within the system had to have a Gas Kammer and Dachau was certainly no exception. The long, rectangular building was built very close to an existing crematorium, which dates to 1940. Construction of "Baracke X" started in May 1942. The work was largely carried out by Polish priests who who prisoners at Dachau, under the supervision of Kapos Karl Wagner and Fritz Wendel. The priests had been given a short course in building and were joined by one joiner and three qualified bricklayers. By late March-April 1943 the project was completed. I have found no record of whether the construction crew were killed afterwards to conceal the potential of the new building. The above information is derived largely from "That was Dachau" by the Czech survivor Stanislev Zamecnik.(Collection Documents, 2004) Zamecnik is a trained historian and his book is quite matter-of-fact. He was a nurse in the infirmary and as such, saw Dr Rascher on a daily basis. Zamecnik concedes that he cannot prove that Rascher was using the Gas chamber to test combat gasses as part of his medical research but goes on to state that it would be most unlike the SS to at least test the facility.(p 284-290) Taffthedigger (talk) 20:01, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

The question of whether or not Dachau had a homicidal gas chamber could easily be solved if visitors were allowed to see every part of the Baracke X building. If visitors were allowed to go into the hallway behind the gas chamber room, they could follow the pipes and see where they originate; then they could determine if the pipes were intended to put gas or water into the room. If visitors were allowed to go into the basement, they could see if the six floor drains in the gas chamber room are really drains, intended to carry water to the sewer line, or if they are fakes, designed to fool the victims. If visitors were allowed to see a photo of the building, taken just after it was built, they could see if the bins on the outside wall were there before the American liberators arrived. If someone were to knock a hole in the ceiling of the gas chamber room, what would they see? Would there be water pipes above the ceiling? The ceiling of the gas chamber is 7.6 feet high, but the adjoining rooms each have a 10 ft. ceiling. What is between the gas chamber ceiling and the 2.4 feet of space above the ceiling?

The delegation of Congressmen arrived at Dachau on May 1, 1945 but they were photographed in the gas chamber room on May 3, 1945. In their report, they described the ceiling as being 10 feet high. Most of these men were at least 6 feet tall and the 7.6 ceiling was so low that they could reach up and touch it, so how could they made a mistake on the height of the ceiling? Did they wait two days before going to see the gas chamber, or did they see it on May 1st? If we knew the answers to all these questions, we would know whether there was a gas chamber at Dachau. Geseke too tambien also (talk) 15:23, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Numbers again

"Camp records list 130,000 persons killed in the camp"

??? It is generally agreed to have been about 30,000, though I can't say on what basis. If the camp records listed 130,000, surely this would be common knowledge. Is this a typo?ALu06 13:13, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Changed it today. This was a serious flaw.ALu06

31.591 persons died in Dachau. (this number is result of „Internationaler Suchdienst“).. see in text http://www.km.bayern.de/blz/web/300017/lageplan.asp ..see also the updated german articel KZ Dachau. Thanks, http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:HotChip--85.181.99.43 09:53, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Arolson - Red Cross Tracing - using the German camp records give 31,591 ( or 31,951 depending on who didn't proofread ). The records give 3,752 in the first 7 years of operation. The first 3 months of 1945 had a count of 13,158. After the US army arrived the deaths continued - 2,226+. 2/3rds of the prisoners were Polish Catholics. Most of the deaths appear to be due to evacuting prisoners from Poland who had typhus. The US troops I have read started catching typhus soon. The official Arolson files appear to use the German camp records as the most reliable data source.159.105.80.63 15:27, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

The U.S. soldiers had been vaccinated for typhus before they going overseas. American POWs were given a booster shot from vaccine sent to the POW camps through the Red Cross. The Germans were working on developing a typhus vaccine at Buchenwald. The doctors who were working on a vaccine were tried as war criminals in the Nuremberg Doctors Trial. The Germans did not use DDT. I don't know if DDT was available to them or if they had already determined that DDT had bad side effects, but they did not use it. The American liberators quickly used DDT and vaccine to stop the epidemic at Dachau. Geseke too tambien also (talk) 15:35, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

The local government resisted designating the complete site a memorial. The former SS guard barracks are now home for the Munich police special task force.

Is this line correct? Do the Munich police special task force currently occupy the former SS guard barracks? wikijde Wikijde 12:30, 21 March 2007 (UTC).

As of my visit there in October 2007 the official guide from the site stated this was true. I don't know about resisting a memorial but the police are stationed there. j_lechem@msn.com 18:44, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Opening date for camp

Here are links to pages showing the same newspaper cutting from Münchner Neueste Nachrichten dated Tuesday 21 March 1933 with details of opening date for Dachau http://www.holocaust-history.org/dachau-gas-chambers/photo.cgi?02 http://www.mazal.org/archive/DACHPHO/Dach02.htm

Translation:

The Munich Chief of Police, Himmler, has issued the following press announcement:

On Wednesday the first concentration camp is to be opened in Dachau with an accommodation for 5000 persons. All Communists and -- where necessary -- Reichsbanner and Social Democratic functionaries who endanger state security are to be concentrated here, as in the long run it is not possible to keep individual functionaries in the state prisons without overburdening these prisons, and on the other hand these people cannot be released because attempts have shown that they persist in their efforts to agitate and organise as soon as they are released.

If anybody can think of a rational for extracting the image from either page and posting it to commons it may be useful to others. --Drappel 12:52, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Paul Berben "Dachau"1933-45 The Official Story" Norfolk Press 1975 - Mr Berben was an inmate of Dachau and a certified holocaust believer. His very detailed book seems to be totally unmentioned by those you would think - he was an eyewitness and his details are matching up very well with current knowledge. ( I can see how he might have been marginalized back when death counts of up to 250,00 was the politically correct stance - but today he appears the eventual winner in the facts department.) His book gores both oxen - a little - probably the truth usually. One interesting story he recounts is the there was about 2,700 Catholic priests ( usually not reqioured to work - exempted due to status?) but they volunteered to work in the hospitals during the massive typhus epidemics. Many priests died because of their close contact with the sick. Instead of being murdered it turns out they were heroes - good for one story, sucks for another. His description of camp life is at odds with the standard story - until the end of the war. At war's end he says all transportation - Red Cross food packets, regular food, medicine, etc ground to a halt. He also says that this continued after liberation - Allies couldn't get regular transportation going for some time - bridges, etc had to be rebuilt. His book deserves at least a footnote, particularly in a wiki Dachau article. In fact the book should be the basis for most of the article - he is/was? an inmate and a believer ( maybe there is a problem with him that I am unaware of?)(One problem I can see is that his book is so factual, unhysterical, verifiable that it is hard to use it for a political agenda - more of an encyclopedic historical type book.)159.105.80.141 13:52, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

PS Mr Berben mentions Dr Blaha in his book - one of the few references to Blaha I have seen. Per Berben the doctor did 10,000+ autopsies at Dachau. Does anyone know where these autopsy reports are? Someone - unless the reports have been destroyed - is setting on a treasure trove of data. Arolson, US Army, USHM, ... the chain of possesion must be researchable.159.105.80.141 14:08, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Maurer or Mauer?

The Red Cross representative was listed twice as Victor Maurer, and twice as Victor Mauer. That confusion seems to have been propagated to here, which copies from an old version of this WP article, as follows:

On April 27, 1945, Victor Mauer, delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross, was allowed to enter camps and distribute food. In the evening of the same day a prisoner transport arrived from Buchenwald. Only 800 survivors were brought from originally 4,480 to 4,800 persons in transit. Over 2,300 corpses were let lie in and around the train. The last regular commander of the KZ, Obersturmbannfuhrer Eduard Weiter, had already fled on 26 April. He probably followed Obersturmbannfuhrer Martin Weiss, who had led the camp from September 1942 until November 1943.

On April 28, 1945, the day before the surrender, Camp Commandant Martin Weiss had left the Dachau camp, along with most of the regular guards and administrators in the camp. On that same day, Victor Maurer, a representative of the Red Cross, had tried to persuade 1st Lt. Johannes Otto, the adjutant of Commandant Weiss, not to abandon the camp, but to leave guards posted to keep the prisoners inside until the Americans arrived. Mauer feared that the prisoners would escape en masse and spread the active typhus fever epidemic. Lt. Otto declined to remain and fled*.

*source: wikipedia.org

This site identifies him as "Victor Maurer", so I have changed the incidences of the latter to the former, as it "sounds" more reasonable. He is also named as Victor Maurer here. However, if someone with explicit knowledge knows that this is wrong, then by all means please change it the other way.

Anyone else doing a web search should be aware, however, that the word "Mauer" in German means "wall", and hence many German pages referring to a "Mauer" in Dachau will, when translated, prove to be referring to a , especially of the camp, instead of naming a person.

--Eliyahu S ^Talk 23:40, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

No mention of a dispute about other units liberating Dachau

There is controversy about which units actually liberated Dachau, in particular claims that units made up of non-white American soldiers were first on the scene but that the Army pulled them out and brought in a "white" unit when it realized the importance of the camp (because it wanted to stage photo-ops for propaganda purposes).

I ran across this website after a quick search, but there are others (I think there was even a book claiming that it was an African-American unit [enlisted men, that is, of course they had white officers!]):

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauLiberation/LiberationDay3.html Critic9328 04:49, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

The dispute among the veterans (including commanders) was quite heated - elsewhere. See [6] for example. The black unit liberated a subcamp of Dachau, and there were several such in area. --HanzoHattori 04:52, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Sentence on "demographics" should either be truncated or elaborated

"In total, over 200,000 prisoners from more than 30 countries were housed in Dachau of which nearly one-third were Jews."

This means that over two-thirds of the prisoners were not Jewish, so either something more specific than "from more than 30 countries" (which is meaningless if none of the countries are named) should be added or the final clause should be eliminated (because it gives undue emphasis to one group who were a minority--in any case Jews from where?--were they Dutch Jews, or German Jews, Polish Jews, etc.?--it doesn't add anything as it stands). (Maybe changing "Jews" to "Jewish" would help.) Critic9328 05:04, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

A liitle note on the construction the gas chamber and second crematoria

The Gas chamber and crematorium (Baracke X)was built just outside the prisoner compound at Dachau but within the area of the SS Kaserne. At Wannsee it was decided that all camps within the system had to have a Gas Kammer and Dachau was certainly no exception. The long, rectangular building was built very close to an existing crematorium, which dates to 1940. Construction of "Baracke X" started in May 1942. The work was largely carried out by Polish priests who who prisoners at Dachau, under the supervision of Kapos Karl Wagner and Fritz Wendel. The priests had been given a short course in building and were joined by one joiner and three qualified bricklayers. By late March-April 1943 the project was completed. I have found no record of whether the construction crew were killed afterwards to conceal the potential of the new building. The above information is derived largely from "That was Dachau" by the Czech survivor Stanislev Zamecnik.(Collection Documents, 2004) Zamecnik is a trained historian and his book is quite matter-of-fact. He was a nurse in the infirmary and as such, saw Dr Rascher on a daily basis. Zamecnik concedes that he cannot prove that Rascher was using the Gas chamber to test combat gasses as part of his medical research but goes on to state that it would be most unlike the SS to at least test the facility.(p 284-290) Taffthedigger (talk) 20:01, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

If you read the minutes of the Wannsee Conference, as written by Adolf Eichmann, you will see that everything was written in euphemisms such as "transportation to the East." There was no mention of the word Gaskammer, which is the German word used to mean a disinfection chamber where clothing was deloused with poison gas called Zyklon-B. The Nazis who met at Wannsee on January 20, 1942 did not talk about details such as homicidal gas chambers. Geseke too tambien also (talk) 20:37, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Question on the "You did this!" posters spread by the US in occupied Germany

During the occupation of Germany the U.S., tried to induce a collective guilt in the German population by for example spreading posters of Dachau victims all over their occupation zone. The title was "YOU DID THIS!" or "You are Guilty of these Atrocities!" Here is an example of such a poster. Here is the same poster from a German Museum. I've seen the same poster on many different sites, so I presume it was the only type, or the most popular type. Another reference to the poster in question.

I'm trying to see if I can use the image in Wikipedia, the poster itself is without copyright since it was created by the U.S. Army, but since the images it uses may still have copyright I cant use it until every image it includes has been verified as free to use.

I've so far managed to identify one of the images.

• View of corpses lying in a row in Kaufering IV. [Photograph #00669].

If anyone recognized any of the other images I would appreciate if you told me where it comes from and copyright status. Thanks.--Stor stark7 ^Speak 15:59, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

The second photo from the left on the top row was taken in the morgue in the Baracke X building at Dachau. Notice that the bodies have been piled up, so as to leave the floor drain not covered by bodies. There is blood around the floor drain, which came from the bodies. This photo was probably taken by the Army Signal Corp which means that it is in the public domain. Geseke too tambien also (talk) 20:53, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

One third of the inmates at Dachau were Jewish

It is frequently mentioned that one third of the prisoners at Dachau were Jewish. One would assume that this means that of the 206,000 inmates registered in the main Dachau camp during its 12 years of existence, one third were Jewish, but this would be wrong. The one third figure refers to the last roll call taken on April 26, 1945 in which it was determined that one third of the inmates in the main camp and all the 123 sub-camps were Jewish. This information was given in the official Army report entitled "Dachau Liberated, The Official Report by The U.S. Seventh Army." Beginning in February 1942, Jews were sent to what is now Poland, not to camps in Germany. When Dachau was liberated, there were around 2,500 Jews in the main camp, but some had only arrived from the sub-camps the day before.

Geseke too tambien also (talk) 19:59, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

The 522nd Field Artillery Battalion did not liberate the Kaufering IV subcamp of Dachau

The 522nd Field Artillery Battalion of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team is credited by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with the liberation of one of the Dachau sub-camps, but it was NOT the Kaufering IV sub-camp. The Kaufering IV sub-camp of Dachau was liberated by the 12th Armored Division of the US Seventh Army on April 27, 1945 with help from soldiers in the 101st Airborne Division, who arrived on April 28, 1945. This information is on this web site: http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauLiberation/KauferingIVLiberation.html Geseke too tambien also (talk) 21:15, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

"barbed-wire gate" at Dachau

This sentence is incorrect: "The camp was surrounded by an electrified barbed-wire gate, a ditch, and a wall with seven guard towers.[4]" The Dachau concentration camp was surrounded on three sides by a wall. On the fourth side was a barbed wire fence and a moat. The sides that were surrounded by a wall had a barbed wire fence in front of the wall. There was no barbed-wire gate anywhere at the main Dachau camp when the camp was in operation. A barbed-wire gate was constructed later so that tourists can now enter the crematoria area from inside the camp. When the Memorial site was first constructed, the American Army was still occupying the former SS garrison and tourists could not walk to the crematoria area, so a new gate had to be constructed at the north end of the former concentration camp. 76.191.171.210 (talk) 22:57, 29 April 2009 (U

"murdered"

Why one should state that the guards were murdered instead of executed. In this way one gives an negative connotation to the execution. In the the article is said that the prisoners "died", not "murdered", giving the impression that it was maybe a natural cause or an accident that 50,000 people died. It is completely insane to insist that the execution of the mass-murderers was a "murder". I am absolutely sure that no surviving prisoner nor relative af a former prisoner would call it murder. Personally, I prefer the word "annihilated"; it was justice.Robvhoorn (talk) 07:54, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Killing prisoners of war is murder, not execution. See for example similar usage on the Malmedy Massacre article.Tchernobog (talk) 23:19, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

In the articke the killing of the prisonerss is described as that they just "died". My only conclusion is that, because you did nit change that word, that you consider the killing of the thousand of psisoners as "legal". In the way you act, you seem to consider the killing of Jews, communists, Jehovah witnesses, homosexuals, POW's of mainly the Soviet Union but also from countries like the United Kingdom, United States, The Netherlands as justified and "legal". The word "murder" assumes a planned killing. I have met several people that have spoken with the Americans in question. The American soldiers were completely ouraged when they saw the thousands of starving prisoners, the walls and heaps of dead bodies with hardly flesh on the bones. And then tey learned about thet train with seven thousand dead Jews at the railway station. And they found lots of dead bodies of POW's from the Soviet Union in the environment of the camp. The soldiers were so furious that they shot the guards; it ewas not planned and so it was not "murder'. Nearly everybody would have reacted in that way. Beside, killing of POW's is an act that can be punished by immediate execution. So, these guards were involved with the murder at more that ten thousand POW's. So, from that point of veiwe the immediate execution was accoring to the rules of war comletely justifeid. Sham to you, that you seem to consider the murder on tenthousands op people as legal, and the killing of massmurders as "murder".Robvhoorn (talk) 08:50, 15 July 2009 (UTC)