When Adolf Hitler became chancellor in 1933, he wanted to be able to "get rid of" his political opponents. In less than a month, Feb. 28th 1933, it became legal to kill political enemies. Six weeks later, Dachau was opened - March 22nd, 1933. It was the first concentration camp, built to contain about 5000 people, and was widely publicised.
No later than May 1st, there were already1200 inmates. They were mostly political prisoners - Jews, Catholics, Social Democrates, and Communists. From the beginning, the guards were killing the prisoners. By the end of the year, 4821 inmates were registered.
By 1945, 206,206 prisoners had been registered. The total amount that died/were killed is unknown, because near the end of the war the Nazis were mass murdering, and the many that were killed in Death Marches and in evacuation were never registered. Civilians could be assigned
Sonderbehandlung, which meant "Special Treatment," the Nazi word for murder.
A total of 31,591 were registered dead, but there could be many, many, more.
On October 1st, 1933, the Disciplinary and Penal code for the Prisoner Camp was issued by SS Oberfuhrer Eicke. It was essentially a liscence for the guards to kill whenever they felt like it:
"Any person who at work, in the living quarters, kitchen workshops, toilets or rest places engages in subversive politics, holds provocative speeches, congregates with others for this purpose, forms cliques, loiters, collects or recieves or buries information, repeats or smuggles out of the camp by means of a note or some other method to a camp visitor information, either true or false, concerning the camp, to be used in our enemies horror propaganda, or who sends written or verbal message through released or transferred prisoners, conceals them in items of clothing or other objects, throws them over the wall, writes coded messages, or any other person who in order to incite rebellion climbs onto the roof of the huts or up trees, or transmits signals with a lamp or by any other means, seeks outside contact, or advises, or supports, or aids others in escape or crime, will be hanged as a subversive instigator under the terms of the revolutionary law."
Once this started, disposal became problematic - there wasn't enough room for all the corpses. In 1941, disposal was at a critical point due to the rapidly increasing amounts of prisoners; now both political, "anti-socials", and jews. In 1940 alone there were 22,675 new prisoners registered, but most never were. The secrecy surrounding the operations is a major cause of the uncertain numbers.
In 1940, the first crematorium was built in Dachau for disposal purposes. The site was carefully chosen - it was in the northwest area of the camp, only accessable by a footbridge. The ovens were contained in a wooden shed, surrounded by a thick grove of trees. Once built, they even further isolated the site by building a large drainage ditch, a barbed wire fence, the camp wall, and another large ditch with running water. Even today, it is nearly impossible to see.
By 1941, there were mass liquidations of prisoners daily. By 1942, the death rate overcame the capacity of the crematorium, so plans were made in April to build another, more efficient one. It was going to be a higher efficiency four-oven crematory with five gas chambers. On July 23rd, construction was approved. The whole thing cost RM150000 - so about $255,000 today. Of the five gas chambers, the first four were intended for fumigation purposes - only the last was a homicidal chamber. This new building was dubbed Barake X.
These were not like "crematoriums", in a sense, built and used for one body at a time. A better term would be "incinerators", as they burned 7-9 corpses at a time, making the process cheaper and more efficient. How long they took is unknown, some places say 2 hours, and others say from 10 to 15 minutes. After burning, the ashes were just buried in the grounds of the incineratorium.
The overcrowding of the prison was not without consequence - the rapid spread of lice that carried Typhus (Typhoid Fever). The Fumigation chambers were intended to fumigate the clothes, shoes, etc, of the dead so they could be reused, killing all the lice. Zyklon-B pellets, a form of hydrogen gas, was used. The design of the chambers were identical to those used in Auschwitz. This was an extremely inneficient process - too much gas was needed and killing the lice took way too long. A new design was brought up, but the project was dropped.
Next door to the gas chambers was the one intended for homicide. It was all an elaborate ploy - there were fake shower heads, a sign reading
Brausebad (shower room), and other various decorations intended to fool the victims into believing they were taking a shower. It only took a few minutes to kill them all. It actually took more gas to kill all the lice than the humans.
A man named Dr. Sigmund Rascher performed so-called "medical experiments" at Dachau, similar to Dr. Josef Mengele's at Auschwitz. They were sick; immersing people in freezing water until they died, using an evacuating chamber to simulate high altitude to the point of death, and using the prisoners to test their war gasses on. These continued until Rascher's 1944 arrest, where he helped his wife kidnapp twins. Three days before the liberation of the camp, Rascher was killed by a shot in the back of his head.
The camp was liberated on April 29th, 1945 - not a pretty sight for the troops. Dead corpses were left everywhere.
Source:
www.holocaust-history.org/dachau-gas-chambers/There are lots of pictures of the camp for anyone who wants to look at them, cause it wont let me post any in the post here....
Clarissa
