This Day in History: 29 April 2020
29 April 1945
75 years ago, today, Dachau concentration camp was liberated by Americans. Five hundred German troops that were guarding the camp were killed within an hour, some murdered by inmates, but mostly by American liberators. These liberators were horrified by what they witnessed at the camp, as they saw huge piles of emaciated dead bodies that were found in more than 30 railway cars and near the crematorium. Prior to this, as the Allied forces were advancing on Germany, 7,000 prisoners from Dachau were forced to begin a death march to Tegernsee, and the next day, many of the SS guards abandoned the camp. The German citizens from Dachau were later forced to bury the 9,000 dead inmates found at the camp.
At Dachau, there were 33,000 survivors, of which 2,539 were Jewish. The camp was the first established by the Nazi regime, and at least 160,000 prisoners passed through the main camp. Medical experiments, such as studying the effects of freezing on warm-blooded creatures in order to treat malaria, were carried out on prisoners. At least 32,000 prisoners at Dachau died of malnutrition and mistreatment, but an unthinkable amount more were transported to the Auschwitz gas chambers. On September 11, 1956, a memorial was established at the site.
Want to find out more about the liberation and history of the Dachau concentration camp? Click here for more information, or here for the first report from the camp in 1934.
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