"Think how we died": a horror story in the Dachau concentration camp

On April 29, 1945, the Dachau concentration camp was liberated by units of the 45th Infantry Division of the US 7th Army. On this day, the Dachau massacre occurred: during the capture of the concentration camp, American soldiers from the 45th US Infantry Division, part of the 7th Army, killed and wounded German prisoners of war. (Watch out! The material may seem unpleasant or intimidating.)

Dachau was one of the first concentration camps in Nazi Germany. For 12 years, more than 240 thousand prisoners passed through it, 70 thousand of whom died. Dachau is notorious for medical experiments on prisoners. Doctors from all over the Reich studied the human body's abilities in Dachau: survival at low temperatures, exposure to gases or low pressure. With these experiments, they intended to create a universal soldier. Himmler himself regularly visited Dachau on inspections to observe the progress of the experiments.

Appearance history

In February 1933, the Reichstag was set on fire. Hitler, who had been appointed Reich Chancellor two days earlier, accused the Communists of using the event to increase the influence of his own party. A state of emergency was declared for a period of five years and a new law "On the Protection of the People and the State"was adopted. This law became the basis for the creation of a special place of detention for political opponents of the Reich. So Dachau appeared.

At first, more than 10,000 members of the Communist Party were exiled to the camp, but then the law was gradually expanded to cover all other "polluting Aryan race" according to racial theory. This list included Jews, drug addicts, Gypsies, the mentally ill, homosexuals, homeless people, and even those who refused to serve in the army. 

The original gate of the camp with the inscription "Labor liberates". After this artifact was stolen and discovered in Norway only two years later, it was placed in a museum

Monument to the dead on the main square of the camp

Prisoners

The life of the prisoners of Dachau was not much different from the life of the prisoners of other concentration camps. They were used as free labor, building roads, quarrying stones, and draining swamps. During the war, they were taken to military factories to collect equipment and ammunition. There were so many prisoners in concentration camps that their labor was sold to private companies.

Upon arrival at the camp, the prisoners were deprived of all their rights. They were given a striped robe with a color label depending on the category: a gypsy, a Jew, a political prisoner, and so on. Some were shot as soon as they arrived at the camp. This was usually the fate of Soviet soldiers.

Toilet room, one on the barrack, where up to 1,600 people lived

Washbasins

Experiments on people

Backbreaking work was not the worst thing that the prisoners of Dachau faced. Here, numerous medical experiments were conducted on people in order to determine the ability of the human body to survive. The prisoners who were subjected to these experiments rarely survived.

The infamous gas chamber

Outside view. Holes in the wall for gas cans

The progress and results of each experiment were carefully documented. Doctors dissected the bodies and described the causes of death, drawing conclusions about which parts of the human body were particularly vulnerable. By the way, the Nazi experiments on living people later formed the basis of many medical discoveries of the XX century. This fact is rarely mentioned, because it sounds like some kind of justification for the Holocaust. 

Crematorium building

Some of the experiments conducted in Dachau

An experiment with head injuries. The man was tied to a chair and every few seconds struck with a hammer on the head with increasing force. The goal was to find out the maximum impact force that the skull can withstand, and to determine the moment when a person can no longer be saved from death.

Experiments with freezing. The prisoners were immersed in a cell with cold water, bringing the body temperature to extremely low values. If the subject survived, they tested ways to save him from hypothermia. According to the results of experiments, it turned out that hypothermia of the occipital part of the head leads to death faster, so foam inserts were added to the helmets of Luftwaffe pilots, which kept their heads afloat in the event of a crash in the cold sea.

A moat ran along the perimeter of the camp. When approaching the fence, which was under tension, the guards opened fire to kill

Experiments on sterilization. German scientists were looking for the most effective way to sterilize groups of people with minimal costs, including using radiation. The reason was the law, according to which homosexuals, the mentally ill, alcoholics and other "harmful to the Aryan race" people had to undergo mandatory sterilization. Most often, the drugs caused bleeding or cancer.

Experiments with blood clotting. Prisoners were forced to take various drugs to improve blood clotting, and then shot or cut off their limbs. The goal was to find a cure that would allow the soldiers to survive a large blood loss.

Dachau Massacre

On April 29, 1945, the American army captured Dachau. The soldiers were discouraged by what they saw. In front of the entrance to the camp were more than 40 wagons filled with corpses. Almost the entire territory of Dachau was littered with bodies. There are two versions of what happened next.

According to one version, the Americans machine-gunned all 560 employees of the camp that evening at the wall of the coal mine, without waiting for an official order. Judging by the memoirs of some of the soldiers involved, they were shocked by the brutality that their distraught colleagues committed.

Another version is no less cruel. According to it, American soldiers gave some prisoners pistols and shovels to finish off the captured camp staff. It is terrible to imagine the brutality with which the prisoners dealt with those who tortured them for many years.

Poplar alley planted by relatives of prisoners in memory

In any case, the Dachau massacre was immediately assessed as a war crime, but then the American military governor who came to power in Bavaria dropped all charges against the soldiers for what happened. 

Monument " Think about how we died here»