Dachau
On March 21, 1933, Himmler, who was in charge of all extermination activities, announced that the first official concentration camp
would be opened in Dachau. At Dachau the SS created the models of incarceration, organizational structure, codes and policies,
medical experimentation, and guard training that served as the basis for the years of punishment, destruction, and killing. It was also
here where the Nazis developed the new field of thanatology, the science of producing death.
Dachau spanned the life of the Third Reich. It housed people from every segment of the society. Dachau was small in its population,
its area, the percentage of Jewish prisoners, the crematorium, and the number of deaths. It was intended as a mild camp for those
prisoners who could perform only light work. Amount the 225,000 human beings passed through Dachau, approximately a quarter of
them died. This figure was extremely low in major camp death statistics.
At the first step, the Nazis created a small hut and barbed-wired prison to provide the necessary labor. In 1937 the prisoners began
to construct the SS complex and industrial center. On August 15,1938, the project was completed, which remained unchanged until
the end of the war.
The newly constructed Dachau included the ordinary camp apparatus with bunkers, a roll call square, canteen, library, infirmary,
barracks, watchtowers, crematorium, gas chamber, and the museum. Each prisoner had a small cupboard and a stool. Each
barrack contained a day room with four tables. The condition there was overall not too excruciating until 1942, when the camp was
overcrowded with more than 12,000 prisoners for the space of 5,000. The camp had a unique feature: the Dachau museum, contained
plaster images of prisoners marked by bodily defects or other "odd" characteristics. Dachau also had its own prostitute and brothel
service in operation by late 1943.
The old crematorium was located in a dingy wooden hut. In 1942, the prisoners constructed a new crematorium, complete with
modern ovens. Cremation was slow, taking about two hours. The wind often spread the smell of burning corpses all over the camp.
A camp inmate could determine the length of time a victim had been in Dachau from the color of the smoke. Newly arrived prisoners,
who still possessed a normal quantity of flesh and fat, produced a yellow smoke when cremated. Old prisoners, who had merely skin
and bones, gave off a thin green smoke. When the crematoria failed to handle the number of dead, the authorities buried the dead in
graves at the Leitenberg.
Medical Experiments
Dachau was the birthplace of the science of Thanatology. SS, military, and civilian doctors and professors performed deadly medical
experiments on live bodies throughout the system. Almost every survivor of any experiment experienced permanent damage of one
kind or another.
From March to August 1942 Dr. Rascher conducted experiments to investigate the limits of human endurance at
extremely high altitudes. The experiments utilized low-pressure chambers. By pumping air out of it, oxygen and air pressure at
high altitude could be simulated. A subject involved in the experiment would begin to perspire and twist his body. Soon his agony
would drive him into unconsciousness. Most prisoners abused their bodies to lessen the pressure in their lungs and on their
eardrums.
After conducted the high-altitude experiment, Dr. Rascher went on to test how much cold a human bing could stand before he died.
These series of experiments lasted until May 1943. Dr. Rascher placed the subjects in a tank of ice water to freeze the subject.
Doctors took the subjects' temperatures and analyzed their blood as their bodies chilled. Most victims died at about 25 degrees
Celsius below zero.
Dr. Rascher also invented a new kind of experiment called dry freezing. The doctors placed a naked prisoner on a stretcher and laid
him outside on the ground. They covered him with a sheet and every hour threw cold water on him, taking his temperature regularly.
The screaming of those freezing men rang throughout the camp. If a subject survived, he was left to die on the ground or in the tents.
Dr. Klaus Schilling was the leader of a group of doctors who investigated immunization for malaria. He and his colleagues infected
healthy prisoners, using mosquitoes or injections of mosquito extract. Then they treated the infected subjects with experimental
drugs. Many of the 1,200 subjects died and others suffered severe pain and permanent disability.
Dachau had been a neat, orderly place. It was those last months of overcrowding, of disease brought by prisoners from other camps,
and of the decrease of food that caused the horrifying conditions described by the liberation teams. On Sunday afternoon, April 29,
1945, The U.S. Seventh Army overran Dachau. Unfortunately, they were not in time to prevent the SS evacuation of carloads of
prisoners to the deeper southeastern Germany. Meeting little resistance, the team declared the camp liberated.
