Talk:Dachau concentration camp

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[edit] Cremation chamber

The cremation chamber at Dachau could not keep up with the cremation of 30,000 people over 13 years.

Yet, we are expected to believe the cremation chambers at Auschwitz and other "death camps" cremated 12 million in the space of 3 years?

I find that almost hysterical, if it weren't so sad.

No-one claims that the cremation chambers at Auschwitz and the other death camps cremated 12 million; that's just another Strawman argument from Holocaust deniers. Jayjg 19:15, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
It is claimed in this article -- laughably -- that those two small ovens incinerated "30,000 victims."
Will the Holocaust Mythologizers NEVER get tired of these canards? ITMotors 15:45, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
OK, I'll bite: Exactly how many ovens do you think it would take to incinerate 30,000 bodies over the space of four years? Nine? Forty-one? Three hundred million? Hell, given two man-sized ovens and an army of enthusiastically racist assistants, I'll bet that even a completely incompetent mass-murderer could make a pretty good go of it.
The human body doesn't take all that long to burn, especially at temperatures the Kremas reached. Here's an experiment for you: go put a fresh side of beef in a common mortuary crematorium, then pull it out after an episode of Hannity & Colmes and see how it looks. A group of blokes shoveling bodies into "those two small ovens" all day isn't going to take very long to get through 30,000 victims. Even if you assume a burn time of as much as one hour per body (it's probably closer to 20-30 minutes), it would take just under 3-1/2 years, working around the clock (which the Nazis are known to have done) in two simultaneously operating ovens, to get through 30,000 victims. Allow for Sundays and holidays off, and you're sitting at right around four years.
At any rate, the Nazis' own records indicate that "those two small ovens" incinerated 30,000 people between 1941 and 1945, so there really isn't much of a debate to be had here. Microtonal 05:45, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)


Not sure how relevant this is, but according to the sign next to the ovens they would each hold 2 or 3 people.


20-30 minutes must be a world record - 2 hours is more like it if some down time for repairs. 15,000 maximum if no mechanical failures - probably more like 10,000 +-. There must be a mass grave nearby.

[edit] Gas Chambers

From Friedrich Paul Berg's website http://www.codoh.com/gcgv/gcdelouse.html:

TODAY AT THE FORMER German concentration camp at Dachau, it is no longer claimed that Jews or anyone else were ever killed in the gas chamber there. In the room that is supposedly a gas chamber, one can clearly read a sign written by the museum authorities in five languages which says, "THE GAS CHAMBER disguised as a 'shower room'-never used as a gas chamber." Although the room was completed in 1942, it was never used for its intended purpose-presumably, it was used for other purposes; perhaps it was used as a shower room after all.

At the western end of the crematorium building which houses the so-called gas chamber "disguised as a shower room," one can today see and walk through four delousing chambers which were used to fumigate clothing.2 The only explanation regarding these chambers is a sign above them, also in five languages, which simply says "Fumigation cubicles" in English and Desinfektionskammern in German. There is no mention anywhere within the camp of the important fact that these chambers used Zyklon-B to fumigate clothing as well as other articles placed within the chambers.

The "shower room" is not a gas chamber at all, but the so-called "fumigation cubicles" are gas chambers. Moreover, the "fumigation cubicles " are extremely well-designed gas chambers which represented, and may still represent, the state of the art in gas chamber design. They were the product of more than 20 years of research and development into the application of hydrocyanic acid (often referred to simply as cyanide) for the extermination of vermin. This is clearly shown by the extensive German technical literature from the end of World War I through World War II on this subject.

Indeed, the fumigation chambers were not used for extermination of human beings at Dachau. Proskauer 14:26, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I can verify that, as per my visit, the 'fumigation cubicles' were strictly for clothing and luggage. They are generally the size and shape of a large shower, but they are distinctly different from the 'shower room'. I suspect there may be some confusion over this.
The actual 'shower room' may not be a proper gas chamber, but it is better designed to be a gas chamber than it is to be a shower. This significantly larger room includes mailbox-like slots such that chemicals -- I assume Zyklon-B -- could be deposited into the room from outside. On the other hand, the 'showers' are not spray heads, nor are they placed in such a way as to facilitate 'showering'. There is little doubt in my mind that this room was NOT a shower.
The documents on site do claim that no prisoners were killed in the shower room. True or not, a large many of them were simply shot a few hundred feet away. In summary, it appears true that the 'gas chambers' (fumigation cubicles) were not used for executions -- by design. The 'shower room' seems to have been designed as a large gas chamber, although historians believe it was never placed into operation. --Mdwyer 22:25, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Wow, a Holocaust denial website claiming that gas chambers weren't used to kill Jews. Quelle surprise. Please use reliable sources. Jayjg (talk) 16:36, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles should not depend on primary sources but rather on reliable secondary sources who have made careful use of the primary-source material. Most primary-source material requires training to use correctly, especially on historical topics.

The citations to these sources should be provided in the article? Proskauer 06:12, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Holocaust denial websites are not reliable sources, pretty much by definition. So no, citations should not be provided in the article. Microtonal 13:49, 10 May 2006 (UTC)


How and who decided that after all these years of propaganda that Dachau didn't have gas chambers after all? Is there a source or link as to how the plaque was changed out of the blue?

http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/camps/dachau/gas-chamber.html This should be addressed in the article. Apokrif 15:31, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


A camp that never had gas chambers - except for delousing - is slyly portrayed as one that did. Are you calling all the pro-Holocaust historians a bunch of liars? I believe they have conceded that Dauchau was not an extermination camp.

[edit] Liberation

Why is information on the Liberation of this camp being removed. The mission of Wikipedia is to "Provide information" not to gloss over horrible peices of history. To present one side as 'Good', and one side as 'evil' is an oversimplification. The execution of unarmmed POWs is historicaly significant, What is the justification for excluding this? Isn't the true horror of the Holocaust the way that seemingly 'normal' people were made to do such acts of evil; the liberation story is the ultimate and final example of this.

The Americans found 32,000 prisoners, dying slowly and crammed 1600 to each of 200 barracks, which had been designed to house 250 people each. The US troops also found 39 railroad cars, each filled with one hundred or more corpses.

Minor mathematical error- 1600 x 200 = 320,000 not 32,000. Either the number per barrack is wrong, the number of barracks is wrong, or the total population of the camp is wrong.

Would someone please check an authoritative source and correct?


Except for those that were sick, the rest looked anything but "dying". The photos of them killing German prisoners look like pretty healthy bloks.

[edit] Oskar Müller

Just wanted to make sure there wasn't a typo or anything: the name Oskar Müller occurs twice in the article, once as the last head of the camp, and later as a communist held at the camp. func(talk) 01:29, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)


Oskar Müller was the inmate that the Americans put in charge of the camp after liberation. There are documents in the Humaities.org link related to him, follow the external links section.

If so, it should be made clear that he was no Nazi officer. --Error 23:56, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Extra

This isn't noteworthy enough to be in the article by a long shot, but in case you're ever going to have a section with literature et cetera on the Dachau concentration camp, Captain Beefheart once made a song about it called Dachau Blues. Its lyrics can be found here: [1] --Michiel Sikma 17:46, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Notable Prisoners

Should the children of Archduke Franz Ferdinand also be included as notable prisoners? It is, to many, quite surprising that Austrian nobility was sent to concentration camps.--85.49.234.93 22:59, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

If you have a source for it, that's certainly notable enough to add to the list. Microtonal 06:07, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Homosexuals

There is no mention of the fact that Dachau was the first of the camps where the Nazis conducted "scientific" experiments on homosexuals, in order to carry out Himmler's policy of "eradicating" the "vice". I remember this vividly coming across when I visited the camp's exhibition centre. [2], [3], [4]. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dermod (talk • contribs) 05:05, 17 February 2006 UTC.

There isn't much discussion at all about what actually went on in the camp. It's mostly just a description of the Kremas and a list of people who were there. The whole article needs to be expanded at least a little bit, I think. I don't have the appropriate resources to do so, though. Microtonal 11:27, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Post Nuremberg

I can't see anything that notes Dachau acted as the crematorium for the Allies of noteable Nazi's post the Nuremberg trials? High Nazi's such as Jodl were cremated at Dachau - Rgds, Trident13 14:03, 7 May 2006 (UTC)


This might be a good lead as to how long it took Germans to cremate a body - some clerk probably wrote all this down in great gory detail. Run quick and destroy the record - wait look at it first.

[edit] Images

I've been fiddling with ways to distribute the current crop of images around the article, and I have come to the conclusion that there are simply too many pictures. In particular, I don't think that Image:Dachau-001.JPG or Image:Dachau-040.jpg are really contributing much of anything to the article itself. Would anyone object if I were to remove these two, and spread the others a little more evenly around the article? Maybe they could be moved to a "more images" gallery at the bottom of the page. Microtonal 23:44, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The mayor and his wife

The information in this article dovetails with a biography of Patton which I read 40+ years ago --Ancheta Wis 10:09, 21 March 2006 (UTC):

  • When Patton saw the Dachau concentration camp, he retched. He then ordered the MPs (Military Police) to escort a Mayor (of a nearby community) and his wife to view the camp. The Mayor and his wife were so ashamed of what they saw that they later committed suicide.

Committed suicide for what reason? Maybe all their family was dead from the war - this assumes a lot ( it actually assumes they felt bad about Jews being dead - I thought the whole message was that the Germans hated the Jews, I am getting confused by the back and forth, pick a stance and stay there.

Well... I agree the first post does rather assume. I'd noticed the tendentious point about the suicide before (I appreciate the poster was just passing it on). There are a few reasons why people in that position might commit suicide, including being widely held to be complicit in atrocity. This would be whether they were complicit or not. So 'ashamed?'. I think the truth is... who knows. What I didn't know until looking into the chronology recently was that the interaction of the camp and the surrounding community was rather less simple than I'd heard. Hakluyt bean 17:28, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Extermination camp vs Concentration camp

Is there a formal definition of the difference between these two? The Wikipedia "Extermination camp" entry does NOT list Dachau. It says there were six camps, all in Poland.

--JohnFlaherty 08:55, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

In fact none of the camps did strictly belong to exclusively one category, as even in Auschwitz-Birkenau there were people incarcerated while there were also large scale extermination efforts in the camps dubbed work camps by the Germans. Overall, most of the camps did promote Extermination through labour, though not all were extermination camps as such. //Halibutt 10:40, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Okay, then should the "Extermination camp" entry be edited to reflect Dachau? Take a look at it. It says there were only six camps, all in Poland.--JohnFlaherty 11:06, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Anybody?--JohnFlaherty 12:23, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

This is my third pimping of Britannica in 3 edits but anyway; it has Dachau as a concentration camp, as distinct from being an extermination camp, to which (it implies specifically for the purpose of extermination) Jewish prisoners were sent from Dachau. There seems a clear distinction there: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9028484 --Hakluyt bean

Okay. Thanks. I just wanted to make sure.--JohnFlaherty 20:25, 8 June 2006 (UTC) Some years back it was begrudging admitted that there had been no gas chambers on German soil. By magic the whole operation moved to Poland overnight. Next it will be...., hold it there is no next - in Poland we stand and fight.

[edit] Figures

From the article:

Dachau was also used for extermination purposes. Camp records list 30,000 persons killed in the camp, with thousands more who died due to the conditions in the camp

This doesn't appear to be accurate. See Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9028484 -

Incomplete records indicate that at least 32,000 of the inmates died there from disease, malnutrition, physical oppression, and execution, but countless more were transported to the extermination camps in Poland.

Hakluyt bean


The word "killed" is probably not totally correct. Execution and physical oppression would mean "killed" but probably any research would have disease as the main culprit.

[edit] Political nature of the camp

Britannica, http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9028484 (same link as above):

The composition of the inmates reflected the Nazis' changing choice of victims. The first inmates were Social Democrats, Communists, and other political prisoners. Throughout its existence, Dachau remained a “political camp,” in which political prisoners retained a prominent role. Later victims included Roma (Gypsies) and homosexuals, as well as Jehovah's Witnesses. Jews were brought to Dachau after Kristallnacht in November 1938. Initially, Jews could be freed if they had a way out of Germany. When the systematic killing of Jews began in 1942, many were sent from Dachau to the extermination camps. Dachau received Jews again after the “death marches” of the winter of 1944–45. These marches, following the forcible evacuation of the extermination camps, were one of the final phases of the Holocaust.

From the official Dachau Memorial site: http://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/englisch/frame/geschichte.htm

After the Anschluß (annexation or connection) with Austria in the spring of 1938, Austrian prisoners were deported to Dachau, while in the same year prisoners from the Sudeten German areas followed, in March 1939 came Czech prisoners, and after the start of the war prisoners from Poland, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France etc. The German prisoners eventually became a minority; the largest national group was formed by the Polish prisoners, followed by prisoners from the Soviet Union.

The article seems to gloss over this and leaves the impression that with the exception of Jewish prisoners and (possibly?) other religious prisoners the composition of the camp was fairly random. By comparison from the article:

"In total, over 200,000 prisoners from more than 30 countries were housed in Dachau" while worth noting, doesn't really shed much light. It's actually just the last line from the Memorial site quote.

Hakluyt bean

Gosh I don't like this 200,000 number. The normal death rate over this period - and add in a typhus epidemic - and 30,000 deaths looks like normal attrition. The Japanese camps in the USA had about the same %. Rats, we need a total rewrite.

Erm, I'm glad someone reads this page besides me atm, but I don't get the anonymous comment above, sarcasm? Position seems to be (and the article doesn't reflect this) that the camp was open for 12 years, is documented as housing in total 200,000 people, and is documented as having 30,000 deaths. Among these were some Russian prisoners of war certainly executed. Hakluyt bean 18:21, 6 August 2006 (UTC)


Guessing that prisoners were not immortal - lived about 70 years each. Then a city or camp of 200,000 would have natural deaths in the 30,000 range. These prisoners appear to have been safer than if they were Germans living in Berlin.

[edit] The Dachaulied

German Wikipedia has a short article on the Dachaulied, "song of Dachau" written by two prisoners. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachaulied . Anybody care to translate this over to English Wikipedia? Thanks. -- 201.78.233.162 22:13, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

It's featured in the article on the satirist Jura Soyfer, co-composer of the song. Should probably be in the article, but then so should many things.... :)
Hakluyt bean 22:41, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chronology

As alluded to in one of my above posts I think the article's lacking a chronology of events at the camp. Anyone mind if I add one/shuffle the article around? Hakluyt bean 18:23, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. --Guinnog 18:24, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gas chambers in Dachau were never used for murder

In spite what the photo says, and so the camp was not "also used for extermination purposes."

http://www.holocaust-history.org/dachau-gas-chambers/

Someone correct this. --HanzoHattori 17:36, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] wrong wrong wrong

I am an Australian who has been to this particular camp when i was in Munich two months ago.

I paid close attention to all information available at the facility and can say that this camp WAS used for genocide, Dachau featured two crematoriums (which ceased operation due to a coal shortage's in the late 30's and early 40's) mass graves were used as an alternative and one gas chamber, which is not the ones seen in the photo on the bottom right had side of the article it was a single "showering room" that could house 20 people at a time. The prisoners that were killed were killed because they were deemed unfit due to malnutrition hence MURDER. The authorities that govern Dachau today (who have no interest in "flowering up" what took place there) formally recognises 200 moralities over the 3rd Reich era. whist nobody will ever know the TRUE toll, the figures mentioned are quite ridiculous.

You missed a significant point. Dachau's GAS CHAMBERS were never used for genocide. They DID cremate corpses there, and they probably did gas-disinfect clothes and personal belongings. But according to what we know today they did not gas people. They shot them, starved them, and worked them to death, but they did not use the infamous 'shower rooms'. Not at this particular camp, at least. --Mdwyer 21:54, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Actual Use of the Gas Chambers

It is almost certain that the fumigation or disinfestation chambers were used for their designed purpose. (...) With the new crematorium a gas chamber was also connected. The whole construction of the crematorium with its gas chamber was completed in 1943. It contained an 'undressing room', a 'shower bath', and a 'mortuary'. The showers were metal traps which had no pipelines for a supply of poisonous gas. This gas chamber was never set in action in Dachau. Only the dead were brought to the crematorium for 'burning', no living for 'gassing'. There is also considerable evidence that at least 3,166 prisoners were sent to Hartheim Castle in Linz. Here they were quickly put to death in the small gas chamber originally used to destroy the mentally retarded and handicapped. (...) Having established that the large gas chamber was indeed a homicidal chamber, little other evidence, apart from Rascher's letter, had surfaced to confirm its actual use on human beings. [5] --HanzoHattori 10:55, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

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