Concentration camp Dachau 1933-1945

Plot

Konzentrationslager Dachau was the first permanent concentration camp, and became the prototype camp and training center for all other concentration camps. Initially the camp held opponents of the Nazi regime, including Communists, Social Democrats, outspoken journalists, and others the Nazis deemed political adversaries. Over time, members of other groups were also imprisoned, such as criminals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Roma, and homosexuals. The number of Jewish prisoners rose in the days immediately after Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938, when more than 10,000 Jewish males were sent to the camp and subjected to brutal physical “retraining.” Dachau came to include some 30 sub-camps in which over 30,000 prisoners were worked to exhaustion and many to death. Prisoners at the camp were assigned to forced labor, beginning with the construction of the camp itself. Subsequently, most worked in armament and munitions factories. German doctors and scientists subjected some prisoners to involuntary medical experiments, and hundreds of victims suffered and died due to high altitude and other experiments. As Allied forces advanced toward Germany, the Germans sent prisoners in camps near the front lines to Dachau, causing massive overcrowding. On April 29, 1945, United Stated troops liberated Dachau.-- Encyclopedia of the Holocaust.