Dachau concentration camp - The first Nazi concentration camp .
Latest hand-picked WWII news.
Six Jewish babies born in Dachau concentration camp reunite 65 years later
German TV is to air a documentary film about the 3 infant boys and 4 infant girls who slipped through the cracks of the Nazi killing machine. American GIs who liberated Dachau in April 1945 were amazed to discover, among the countless dead, 7 Jewish mothers and their babies, who had avoided execution or starvation. May 2010, six of those former babies are to gather for a reunion at Dachau. Miriam Rosenthal's description of the war years on camera is the first time she spoke German again after leaving Germany: "As a girl, I imagined I had been born in a forest. All my mother would tell me was that people were treated very cruelly there."
(haaretz.com)
Dutch entertainer Johannes Heesters disputes singing for SS at Dachau camp
A 104-year-old Dutch-born singer who made his name performing in Adolf Hitler's Third Reich is trying to clear his name of allegations he sang for Nazi guards at the Dachau camp. Johannes Heesters admits that he toured the camp in 1941, but is suing in a civil court in Berlin to have an author and documentary maker retract claims that he entertained the SS troops while there. "It never happened," Heesters said in a statement explaining his links to Nazi-era Germany on his online site. Author Volker Kuehn has no intention of taking back the allegation, which is based on a 1990 interview with former Dachau inmate Viktor Matejka.
(eurojewcong.org)
Dachau concentration camp remains a symbol of evil - Arbeit macht frei
The crow guides the way to the crematorium. Past the "Arbeit macht frei" (Work will make you free) sign at the gate of the Nazi concentration camp. Past the rows of gravel that once held the barracks where the inmates were kept 1933-1945 and where 32,000 persons perished. Past the guard towers and barbed-wire fence. Past the gardens and shrines - memorials on ground atop heaps of dead from generations past. Dachau was the model for other Nazi camps: The first inmates were political prisoners and those of mixed ancestry. In all 200,000 prisoners from over 30 countries were held at Dachau - Now 800,000 people visit every year.
(courierpress.com)
Execution of SS soldiers at Dachau
"The killing of unarmed POWs did not trouble many of the men in I company that day for to them the SS guards did not deserve the same protected status as enemy soldiers who have been captured after a valiant fight. To many of the men in I company, the SS were nothing more than wild, vicious animals whose role in this war was to starve, brutalize, torment, torture and murder helpless civilians." -- Flint Whitlock, The Rock of Anzio, From Sicily to Dachau: A history of the U.S. 45th Infantry Division.
(scrapbookpages)
Woman pursues mystery of Dachau album with a signature: Porulski (Article no longer available from the original source)
Arrival, enslavement, torture, death - the 30 pictures in album expose the worsening nightmare in Dachau. Now, Shari Klages wants to make the album public. Scholars call it historically unique. But who drew the pictures? Only Klages' father, who brought the album back from Dachau, could know. But he committed suicide in 1972. The only clue was a signature at the drawings: Porulski. ... She, Michael Berenbaum and Avi Hoffman began chipping away at the album's secrets at the Dachau memorial, where they found an arrival record for artist Michal Porulski. They also discovered that the album's binding was most likely from the recycled leather of an SS officer's uniform.
(iht)
"Dachau was like a hotel," said Treblinka survivor Edi Weinstein (Article no longer available from the original source)
We've all heard the names Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz. But few realize that there were many more German camps dotted across Third Reich and in countries overrun during the Nazi blitzkrieg. Perhaps less familiar is Treblinka. "Dachau was like a hotel," said Treblinka survivor Edi Weinstein. "Treblinka was worse than Auschwitz. In Auschwitz ... there were hundreds of thousands of others working in the industries. In Treblinka there were no names, there were no numbers - they killed everyone. A few Jews were put to work, but only to kill others." During its final months 99% of the victims died within 2 hours of reaching Treblinka.
(zwire)
Cash-Strapped Death Camp Memorial Sites Struggle to Survive
Germany's memorial sites at Nazi camps are in dire economic straits. The Dachau camp memorial site near Munich receives over 800,000 visitors per year. It is among the best-known sites commemorating the memory of the millions who perished in the Holocaust. But faced with an acute cash crunch, memorial centers strewn across Germany are struggling more and more to carry out their primary task: educating future generations about the horrors. Barbara Distel, director of the Dachau memorial site said education department cannot meet all requests for tours: "The situation in Dachau is unsatisfactory."
(dw-world.de)
Nazi guest book from Dachau camp - signed by Heinrich Himmler
Phil Burgess has donated an important historical document - the Nazi guest book from the Dachau camp - to a Melbourne Museum. The book was signed by Nazis who visited the infamous death camp, opened in March 1933, and signatures include that of SS commandant Heinrich Himmler. "It is a quite remarkable - and disturbing - document of a horrific episode of human history. This book and its inscriptions bring you face-to-face with evil." The guest book was "liberated" by his aunt, Elizabeth Burgess, who was a nurse with the US 42nd Infantry Division that entered Dachau in April, 1945.
(theage)