Dachau Concentration Camp Virtual Tour

Dachau Concentration Camp Virtual Tour

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1. Main SS Guardhouse

From 1936, the gate building formed the main entrance to the commandant’s headquarters on the SS grounds. This is where the camp SS, responsible for guarding the prisoners, was quartered. The main SS guardhouse was the place where the arriving prisoners first entered the concentration camp. After arriving at the Dachau railway station, the prisoners were forced to march to the camp under the watch of the SS guards. Buses and trucks were also used to bring the inmates to the camp. Prisoner transports reached the SS camp via the train track that led directly from Dachau station.

2. Political Department

The traumatic registration procedure for the newly arrived prisoners usually began in the rooms of this building. The political department recorded personal information, took police photographs, compiled prisoner files, and assigned numbers to the prisoners. For every prisoner they registered the date of admission, transfer to another camp, release, or death. The political department also interrogated prisoners, often using torture.

Prisoner Number

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5. Jourhaus with Camp Gate

The Jourhaus was the entrance and exit of the prisoner camp, which the SS officially called the “protective custody camp”. Located in the Jourhaus were the duty rooms of the camp SS and the staff of the political department. Installed and controlled by the SS, and hence dependent on them, the “prisoner functionaries” assumed a series of guard, supervisory, and administrative tasks. These prisoners were forced to carry out the orders issued by the SS, even if these orders threatened the health or life of their fellow prisoners – otherwise they could expect to be punished.

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6. Roll Call Area

The SS carried out the roll call and the punishments on this vast open space. The prisoners had to assemble in front of the barracks for the morning headcount. From there they marched to the roll call area, where they had to stand at attention in rows of ten. The SS forced the prisoners to remain stock-still in this position no matter what the weather was like. Following roll call, which usually lasted an hour, but frequently took much longer, the prisoners had to line up in their work details. This whole procedure was repeated in the evening after work. If the number of persons counted and reported did not match the official figure, then all the prisoners had to remain standing at attention until the reason for the diverging numbers was found. Only then did the SS allow the prisoners to return to barracks. Ill and frail prisoners often collapsed from exhaustion during roll call. The other prisoners were not permitted to go to their aid.

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7.1. Shunt Room

After arriving in the prisoner camp, the inmates were first taken by the SS to the shunt room in the maintenance building. The new arrivals were subjected to a degrading procedure, forced to endure the violent deprivation of their personal rights and liberties. Standing behind the tables were prisoners who the SS forced to work in the so-called “prisoner possession administration”. The SS ordered the newly arrived prisoners to hand over their clothes and personal possessions. The prisoners at the desks listed these items. The new arrivals then had to move on to the prisoner baths close by.

7.2. Prisoner Baths

In the prisoner baths, the new arrivals had their heads and bodies shaven, were disinfected and showered. The SS imposed this procedure not only for reasons of hygiene – it was also designed to deprive the prisoners of a sphere of intimacy and humiliate them. Prisoners were then brought to the baths to shower once a week at first, later less frequently. After showering, the newly arrived prisoners, harassed by the SS, hastily received a prisoner uniform that in most cases was ill fitting. From 1938 onwards, the uniform comprised a jacket, a pair of pants, and a cap of blue-and-white striped drill fabric. The shoes were made of wood and in part linen.

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9. Barracks

Each of the prisoner barracks, also known as “block” in the language of the camp, was divided into four “rooms”. Each of these “rooms” was in turn made up of day quarters furnished with tables, stools, and lockers, as well as sleeping quarters with wooden bunk beds. The prisoners were defenseless against the brutal despotism of the SS block leaders who bullied them with strict and minute regulations on the cleanliness of the floors, how things were to be arranged in the lockers, or how the beds were to be made. Even the slightest of deviations from the draconian standards was severely punished. Each of the accommodation barracks was designed to hold 200 persons; towards the end of the war, the barracks were full to overflowing however, with up to 2,000 prisoners crammed into a barrack.

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10. Sickbay

The sickbay functioned as a kind of camp hospital. In reality however, the ill prisoners had to endure disastrous conditions. The SS doctors generally neglected them. There was, moreover, a blatant shortage of medicine and bandaging materials. The living conditions of the prisoners worsened rapidly once the war began. Due to malnourishment, lack of hygiene facilities, and physical exhaustion, they were in a terrible state of health. Because of the rapid spreading of infectious diseases, particularly towards the end of the war, the sickbay became a place of mass dying. Beginning in 1941, SS doctors carried out horrific medical experiments on prisoners there. They oversaw experiments on the impact of exposure, altitude, and seawater. Prisoners were subjected to life-threatening hypothermic conditions in a water basin and forced to drink chemically-treated saltwater. Hundreds died during these inhuman experiments.

13. Crematorium Area

The crematorium area is the main place of remembrance in the Memorial Site. The area was already being used to remember the dead immediately upon liberation. Today, access to the crematorium area is via a bridge from the former prisoner camp. As the prisoner numbers and the death rate rose dramatically with the outbreak of war, in the summer of 1940 the SS had a first crematorium fitted with a furnace built. Just a year later, the capacity of this crematorium was insufficient. In the spring of 1942, work began on building “barrack X”, which was then put into operation a year later. This was a crematorium with four furnaces, a disinfection chamber for clothing, dayrooms and sanitary facilities, as well as morgues and a gas chamber disguised as a “shower bath”. There can be no doubt that “barrack X” was designed for the mass extermination of prisoners.