When was dachau established

On 22 March , less than three months after Adolf Hitler was appointed German Chancellor, the first concentration camp of the Nazi regime was established in the town of Dachau, about 10 miles northwest of Munich, in Southern Germany. Large numbers of Jews were also interned at Dachau. In the days following Kristallnacht in November , over 10, Jewish people were imprisoned in the 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. As in other camps, prisoners were forced to stand for long periods while a roll call was conducted. The camp orchestra would play and the SS sometimes made the prisoners sing.

Dachau prisoners were used as forced laborers. The U. Meanwhile, those who survived the Tegernsee death march were freed by American troops on May 2. During the entire time in which Dachau served as a concentration camp and death camp, over , prisoners were cataloged as having passed through its gates. An inestimable number, running into the thousands, were never registered, making it impossible to know exactly how many people were imprisoned at Dachau and how many died there.

The Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site , which stands on the site of the original camp, opened to the public in It is free to enter and thousands of people visit Dachau each year to learn about what happened there and remember those who were imprisoned and died during the Holocaust. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.

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Outside the town of Dachau, Germany, the SS Schutzstaffel , Protection Squads establishes its first concentration camp to incarcerate political opponents. Between and , concentration camps Konzentrationslager ; KL or KZ were an integral feature of the Nazi regime.