Dachau was located about 10 miles from Munich. It was the first official Nazi camp and from it evolved a large, ever expanding concentration camp system. It was never intended to be an extermination center, but rather as a camp for political dissidents and German Jews. Official records indicate that of the 225,000 persons who passed through Dachau, 32,000 died. It is more likely that 50,000 died. As the war expanded, the types of prisoners also expanded, but the Jewish group was never as large as at the other camps. The SS organized their own industries and businesses at Dachau. Also, prisoners were hired out in groups to armament manufacturers and housed near the factories. It is estimated that up to 37,000 prisoners worked almost exclusively on armaments. Dachau had the largest group of clergy inmates of any camp in the concentration system. Dachau also served as the model for the medical experiments that would be conducted, ultimately, throughout the concentration camp system. Conditions in the camp deteriorated badly in the last months of the war due to mass transports into the camp from the Balkans and evacuated camps in the east. When the American Army liberated the camp, the troops found 30,000 prisoners and 8,000 corpses.
Bad Ischel (Mitter Weissenbach)
Distel & Jakush, Concentration Camp Dachau 1933-45, Comite International de Dachau (1978)
Encyclopedia Judaica, CD-Rom Edition, Keter Publishing
Erik Lordahl, German Concentration Camps 1933-1945, History and Inmate Mail (2000). Referred to as Lordahl.
Feig, Hitlers Death Camps (1979)
Copyright © 2001 Edward Victor