Hitler's First Victims
Page 28
DACHAU CONCENTRATION CAMP, 1933
This drawing with the accompanying legend indicates the structures in the camp at the end of 1933. The drawing first appeared in 1934 in the monograph “Konzentrationslager,” part of Sozialdemokratische Schriftenreihe (Social Democratic Publication Series), published in Karlsbad [Karlovy Vary], Czechoslovakia. The “inner camp” with barracks is in the upper right quadrant. (illustration credit i1.4)
LEGEND
A. The wall around the camp, nearly three meters [ten feet] high and fortified with barbed-wire barriers*
B. Barbed wire and high-voltage wire around the prisoner barracks. In front of the wire is a low fence.*
C. Canal [Würm Mill Creek]*
D. Fence
1. Main entrance to camp*
2. Road to Dachau, constructed by the prisoners*
3. Guard house*
4. SS facility with kitchen, mess hall, and dining area for the SS
5. Prisoner kitchen with cellar [where four Jewish detainees were allegedly beaten to death]*
6. Prisoner arrival hall, registration room*
7. Prisoner dining area*
8. Lavatories
9. Machine gun tower with searchlight* [constructed after Beimler’s escape]
10. Monument
11. Entrance to the prisoner barracks*
12. Prisoner barracks; the Roman numerals correspond to the accommodations of the ten companies of prisoners [Barrack II was known as the Judenbaracke, or “Jew Barrack”]*
13. Revier, infirmary for prisoners [Aron]*
14. Arrest Bunker [Hunglinger, Dressel, Götz, Lehrburger, Schloss, Nefzger]*
15. Washhouse
16. Roll call area for prisoners*
17. The Rondell
18. Gravel pit* [Strauss]
19. Old gravel pit with pond* [Hausmann]
19a. Footbridge over the pond
20. Shooting range for the SS* [Benario, Goldmann, A. Kahn, E. Kahn]
21. SS camp guards
22. Torture chamber “Schlageter House”
23. Newly built detention cells, bunker, and lavatories
24. Workshops for the craftsmen
25. Training ground for the SS with obstacle course, climbing wall, foxholes, trenches, etc.
26. Commandant’s headquarters*
27. Revier for SS
28. Facility housing generators and weapons depot
29. Main power line
30. SS quarters
31. SS lavatories
32. Sports grounds for SS
* * *
+ Cross marks indicate key locations in the camp where prisoners were abused.
* The author has added asterisks beside locations relating to incidents in the spring and summer of 1933 (primarily in the upper right quadrant). The names of murder victims have been added in brackets.
The barracks of the abandoned Royal Munitions and Powder Factory near the town of Dachau, just north of Munich, served as a concentration camp to relieve Bavaria’s penal system of overcrowding. (illustration credit i1.5)
The detainees were accommodated in barracks in a wire enclosure known as the “inner camp.” High-voltage wiring strong enough to kill a man provided additional security. (illustration credit i1.6)
The ten barracks of the “inner camp” initially housed approximately fifty detainees each. The barbed-wire fencing is clearly visible in this photograph, as are additional wire entanglements. (illustration credit i1.7)
Initially, detainees were transported to the Konzentrationslager Dachau by bus and in open-backed trucks, thirty at a time. In this photograph from spring 1933, a bus arrives at the main entrance of the facility. (illustration credit i1.8)
In this May 1933 photograph, arrivals in Dachau wait near two SS men (far right). “As long as we are on guard here, nothing will happen to you,” one state police officer had told detainees the previous month, “but if we leave, you will be in trouble.” (illustration credit i1.9)
A state police captain objected to the use of his men for a form of detention he considered illegal. As Munich police chief and Reichsführer SS, Heinrich Himmler simply shifted power from the state police to the Nazis’ private security forces, the SS, in April 1933. (illustration credit i1.10)
Hilmar Wäckerle was handpicked by Himmler to be Dachau’s first camp commandant. As a trained farm manager, the thirty-three-year-old SS captain was familiar with managing livestock in barbed-wire enclosures. A day after Wäckerle arrived in Dachau, four Jewish detainees were shot in an alleged escape attempt. (illustration credit i1.11)
A week after the Dachau shootings, a reporter from the New York Times toured the concentration camp and interviewed Wäckerle. On April 23, 1933, the Times mistakenly reported that the shooting victims were communists, and failed to mention that all four were Jewish. (illustration credit i1.12)
The “inner camp” as it looked in spring 1933 at the time of the visit by the Times reporter. By then, the commandant was having Jewish prisoners selected from arriving transports and placed in Barrack II, known as the Judenbaracke (“Jew Barrack”). (illustration credit i1.13)
Josef Hartinger was considered a rising star in the state civil service. As a prosecutor in Munich, he was responsible for criminal investigations in Dachau. His anti-Nazi sentiments earned him the epithet Jüdling, or “little Jew.” (illustration credit i1.14)
Hartinger was praised for his mastery of the criminal code (Strafprozessordnung), which outlined the duties of public officials, as well as the legal rights of citizens. Paragraph 160 obligated Hartinger to investigate any death by “unnatural cause.” This updated version of the code appeared in May 1933 at the time of Hartinger’s Dachau murder investigations. (illustration credit i1.15)
Rudolf Benario was killed along with his friend Ernst Goldmann in the alleged April 12 escape attempt. Both men had been taken into protective custody in early March for their political opposition to the Nazis. This photograph shows Benario in 1931 or 1932. (illustration credit i1.16)
Arthur Kahn, a medical student at the university in Würzburg, was taken into protective custody in March. He died the same day as Benario and Goldmann. (illustration credit i1.17)
Erwin Kahn was critically wounded after being shot repeatedly on April 12. He was rushed to a Munich hospital, where he related the shooting incident to the attending physician. Kahn died four days later. This excerpt from Kahn’s medical record charts his deteriorating condition. (illustration credit i1.18)
Karl Wintersberger was Hartinger’s direct superior and was well known for his vigorous prosecution of Nazis in the 1920s. When Hartinger told Wintersberger he believed the SS were executing Jews in Dachau, Wintersberger responded, “Not even they would do that.” (illustration credit i1.19)
The Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter announces the appointment of German war hero General Franz von Epp as Reich governor of Bavaria. Reich governors monitored state compliance with national security measures following the Reichstag fire and were part of Hitler’s strategy of centralizing power in Berlin. (illustration credit i1.20)
As Bavaria’s state minister of justice, Dr. Hans Frank clashed repeatedly with police chief Himmler over the treatment of concentration camp detainees. In 1933, Hartinger saw in Frank a bulwark against Nazi excess. Ironically, Frank would later be hanged at Nuremberg for his central role in the Holocaust. (illustration credit i1.21)
Many camp guards were Nazi street ruffians recruited into service as SS guards. “My guards consist of 120 storm troop men,” Wäckerle told the Times. The guards worked in twenty-four-hour rotations, with thirty men to a shift. (illustration credit i1.22)
The Dachau detainees were subjected to a grueling schedule. Their workday began with reveille at 6:00 a.m. and ended at 5:30 p.m. Here detainees pull a grading drum for leveling road surfaces. (illustration credit i1.23)
Most of the construction work in the camp was undertaken by the detainees. The photograph shows some of them constru
cting a watchtower along the camp perimeter. (illustration credit i1.24)
One detainee recalled that Benario, Goldmann, and the two Kahns were lounging between Barracks II and III when they were summoned by SS guard Hans Steinbrenner and led away to their executions. (illustration credit i1.25)
This barrack interior shows detainees before striped uniforms were introduced. One Jewish detainee, Karl Lehrburger, attempted to hide himself on a top-tier bunk to avoid detection but was discovered and later executed by Steinbrenner on Wäckerle’s orders. (illustration credit i1.26)
Detainees transport straw sleeping sacks to their barracks. Josef Götz was shot in the forehead while carrying his sack down the hall of the Arrest Bunker. SS guard Karl Wicklmayr claimed Götz had assaulted him. (illustration credit i1.27)
Meals were taken in a large hall equipped with wooden benches and tables. It was Götz’s remark over dinner that the shooting of Benario, Goldmann, and the two Kahns was “fascism in its purest form” that resulted in his execution three weeks later. (illustration credit i1.28)
Hans Beimler, a communist Reichstag delegate, was the commandant’s prize catch. His dramatic nighttime escape from Dachau made international headlines and was a public humiliation for Wäckerle. (illustration credit i1.29)
Beimler published his firsthand account of Dachau atrocities under the German title Im Mörderlager Dachau within months of his escape. He described in detail the deaths of several detainees and focused particular attention on Steinbrenner. (illustration credit i1.30)
Hans Steinbrenner was Dachau’s most notorious SS guard. He led the camp “whipping team” and personally selected Benario, Goldmann, and the two Kahns for execution. He was nicknamed Mordbrenner, or “murder man.” (illustration credit i1.31)
Wilhelm “Willy” Aron was a twenty-five-year-old junior attorney from Bamberg who was beaten to death by Steinbrenner and his whipping team. His corpse was burned in a shed in order to obscure the traces of the beating. This photograph is taken from Aron’s university file. (illustration credit i1.32)
Aron’s university record noting his residence in Bamberg; his state citizenship, first as a Prussian then as a Bavarian (as of April 9, 1929); his religion, “Israelite”; and the universities he attended in Erlangen, Würzburg, and Munich. (illustration credit i1.33)
Aron’s death notice in the Bamberger Volksblatt: “Our only child, Junior Attorney Wilhelm Aron, was unexpectedly taken from us by death. The funeral was conducted in stillness. Bamberg, May 22, 1933. Attorney and Judicial Counsel Aron and Wife.” (illustration credit i1.34)
The first SS physician assigned to a concentration camp, Dr. Werner Nürnbergk issued fraudulent death certificates to avoid proper legal investigations. He later became increasingly concerned about his criminal culpability. (illustration credit i1.35)
Dr. Moritz Flamm, a state medical examiner, delivered the hard evidence Hartinger needed for his murder indictments. There is no extant photograph of Flamm, but his signature reflects the precision and clarity for which he was admired by Hartinger and others. The SS tried repeatedly to murder Flamm, and most likely eventually succeeded. (illustration credit i1.36)
Thirty-one-year-old detainee Leonhard Hausmann was shot while allegedly trying to escape. The SS guard claimed he fired from a distance of ten to twelve meters; forensic evidence, including this drawing, showed the distance to be less than thirty centimeters. (illustration credit i1.37)
The first six names on this transport list, dated April 24, 1933, were state police agents caught spying on the Nazi Party. Herbert Hunglinger (4) committed suicide in the Arrest Bunker. Sebastian Nefzger (6), an amputee and veteran of the Great War, was beaten, strangled, hanged, then had his wrists slit to feign suicide. Beimler (7) was tortured and instructed to hang himself, but of course escaped. (illustration credit i1.38)
A forensic photograph of Sebastian Nefzger’s corpse with evidence of torture from Steinbrenner’s whipping team. Dr. Flamm’s detailed autopsies for Dachau victims, as long as thirty pages, were eventually presented at the Nuremberg tribunal. (illustration credit i1.39)
In the face of mounting foreign criticism of Nazi practices, Himmler transferred Wäckerle in July 1933. “Of course, I could not have known that his successor would be even worse,” Hartinger later wrote. The new commandant, Theodor Eicke, had been a patient in a psychiatric clinic before assuming responsibility for Dachau. (illustration credit i1.40)
Eicke is seen here releasing detainees as part of a 1933 Christmas amnesty. Dachau became the “model camp” for Nazi atrocity, with the first crematory oven and the first gas chamber. (illustration credit i1.41)
Hans Frank testifying at Nuremberg. He recalled that the Hartinger indictments were so divisive among the Nazi leadership that Hitler intervened and ordered the state investigations terminated. (illustration credit i1.42)
The Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site gate today with the words “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work shall set you free”). It is less than a hundred meters from the place where Benario, Goldmann, and the two Kahns were shot. “The trail of blood that began in Dachau,” one Holocaust survivor claimed, “ended in Auschwitz.” (illustration credit i1.43)