Please note: On Nov 6th all film showings of the documentary "Dachau Concentration Camp" have to be canceled. Furthermore room 8 to room 13 of the exhibition will be closed.

In 2003 a new permanent exhibition was opened at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. The exhibition is located in the former maintenance building (Wirtschaftsgebäude) and in 13 sections documents the chronology of the Dachau Concentration Camp and the site since it's liberation by American troops in 1945.

The exhibition follows the example of historian and Holocaust survivor Stanislav Zámecník who, in his book "That was Dachau," divides the history of Dachau Concentration Camp into three phases:

Dachau Concentration Camp1933-1939

In the first years, Dachau Concentration Camp served as an internment center for anyone who, for political, ideological, or racial reasons, was viewed as an adversary of the National Socialists and their propagated social order. Initially, only German nationals were imprisoned in the camp. The first foreign prisoners came to Dachau in 1938, following the annexation of Austria and as a result of the Munich Agreement. The camp served as an instrument of terror in the government's consolidation of power and played an increasing role in the war preparations. 

Dachau Concentration Camp 1939-1942

With the start of the war, the death toll among prisoners increased rapidly and the concentration camp became a tool of wartime politics: forced labor became an instrument of extermination, and prisoners who were incapable of work were murdered in killing centers. The camps developed into execution sites in which members of the intelligencia from the German occupied territories, as well as Soviet prisoners of war, were killed.

Dachau Concentration Camp 1942-1945

In the last years of the war the prisoners were increasingly forced to work as slave labourers for the armaments industry. A large network of subsidiary camps of Dachau Concentration Camp emerged in southern Germany and Austria. Newly arriving transports of prisoners from the evacuated camps near the war front led to a sharp increase in the number of prisoners and living conditions deteriorated rapidly.

The last section of the exhibit deals with the history of the site from the liberation of Dachau Concentration Camp in 1945 to the development of the memorial site.

The main exhibition also illustrates the respective historical functions of the areas. It is supplemented with complementary exhibitions in the bunker. the barrack, and in the crematorium as well as with plaques in the areas outside of the memorial site. Visitors follow the recurring theme of the exhibit "The Way of the Prisoners," which documents the fate of the prisoners of Dachau Concentration Camp. Especially important parts of the main exhibition are the so-called Schubraum (Shunt room) and former prisoner baths, which were two stations in the commital process.

The texts in the exhibit and in the outer areas are in two languages (German and English).