Dachau Concentration Camp in World War II

The Holocaust was the elimination of millions of Jews. This terrible incident left many families and innocent people scarred. There were few survivors and most died in very harsh and cruel ways. Dachau Concentration Camp was a very cruel death camp where many Jews were executed during World War II.

The Jewish population before the Holocaust was 9,793,700. Though Jewish people were judged for many reasons such as their beliefs or way of life, the Jewish were doing fine and for the most part were happy. Then after Adolf Hitler gained so much power, the Jews began to be eliminated. It all started with concentration camps “In March 1933, the first concentration camp for political dissenters opened at Dachau” (Bartel 5). Dachau was the first regular concentration camp “Dachau, established on March 20, 1933 in the southern German town of the same name…” (Jennifer). There was a sub-camp of Dachau that was called Allach; Allach did many of the same things as Dachau.

The first year that Dachau was open it housed about 4,800 prisoners. The number rose as the persecution of Jews increased. On November 10-11, 1938, more than 10,000 Jewish men were interned there. Dachau camp was also a training center for SS concentration camp guards. Because Dachau was the first regular concentration camp the way it was organized and the routine they had became a model for the many other concentration camps that were later made. Dachau had two sections, one was the crematories where many Jewish bodies were burned day and night 24/7 and the other which was the camp area. The camp area which was the second part of Dachau had 32 barracks, with one for those who opposed what the Nazi’s were doing, and another one that was for medical experiments. Administration...

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...her categories. “Starting that day, the Germans forced more than 7,000 prisoners, mostly Jews, on a death march from Dachau to Tegernsee far to the south” ("Dachau”). In the duration of the death march, anyone who was unable to continue the march for any reason was shot immediately by the German soldiers. This was not the only was that prisoners died though, many of them also died of hunger, cold, or exhaustion. On April 29, 1945, American forces liberated Dachau. As American soldiers approached Dachau they found more than 30 railroad cars filled with dead bodies that were brought to the camp.

The number of prisoners that died at Dachau between 1933 and 1945 was over 188,000 and the number of prisoners who died between January 1940 and May 1945 was at least 28,000. It is unlikely that we will ever know exactly how many Jews died at the very cruel death camp Dachau.