Newsletter Issue 7, Spring 2016

Evidence for Posterity. The Drawings of the Dachau survivor Georg Tauber

The Bavarian advertising illustrator Georg Tauber documented not only the violent “daily routine” in the Dachau concentration camp but also the arrival of U.S. Army troops and life in the camp after liberation. The more than 60 drawings we ...read more

An evening devoted to music in concentration camps with Francesco Lotoro

Music possessed a wide variety of functions in the “everyday life” of the concentration camps. It could console, give voice to hopes, or send out a signal of solidarity and resistance; at the same time however, it was used as an instrument of repression and torture, for example when ...read more

Dachau contemporary witness talk with Henny Brenner

Henny Brenner 1941 in Dresden Born on November 25, 1924, Henny Brenner’s mother is Jewish, her father a Protestant. Henny enjoys a sheltered childhood while growing up in Dresden. With the implementation of the Nazi race laws the fortunes of the family – now stigmatized as of “mixed race” and ...read more

Thematic tours and excursions

In addition to regular tours, the Education Department of the Memorial Site offers tours and excursions every month focusing on special themes. More detailed information on the respective tours is available in our event calendar Bildungsprogramm (pdf in German, 868 kB). Thematic tours Meeting point: at the Visitor’s Center of the Dachau ...read more

Catalog presentation and showing of the film "Das Mahnmal von Nandor Glid in Dachau"

Helmut Meewes recounted the story behind his film in detail with Dr Andrea Riedle. He spoke of his childhood in the Second World War and his experiences as a forced laborer in a Czech mine. These were formative for his interest in the history of the concentration camps. Helmut ...read more

Dachau contemporary witness talk with Maurice Cling

Maurice Cling told the audience about the very sheltered childhood he enjoyed growing up in a Jewish family in Paris. Even after the German Army occupied the city he was not aware of any grave danger. The situation changed dramatically in May 1944 – his family was arrested ...read more

Albert Knoll: presentation of Der Rosa-Winkel-Gedenkstein and the awarding of the André Delpech Prize

Albert Knoll began his book presentation by outlining the history of paragraph 175, which since coming into force in 1872 made sexual acts between men a punishable offence and was then tightened considerably in its application during the Nazi era. Drawing on biographies from prisoners in the Dachau concentration ...read more

Lecture by Detlef Garbe: Between Resistance and Martyrdom. Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Dachau Concentration Camp

Dr Detlef Garbe Right at the start of his lecture, Detlef Garbe emphasized that only 20 years ago the Jehovah’s Witnesses were still very much “a forgotten victim group”, although they were only community with a worldview to be assigned their own special prisoner category. As so-called “Bible students” they ...read more

Results of the visitor study

In six phases each lasting a week, almost 2,500 part-standardized questionnaires were filled out by individual visitors and groups. For the first time, school classes were also included into the survey in an additional week. Choosing the visitors to take part in the survey was done on a sample basis ...read more

Video messages

On April 29, 1945 soldiers of the U.S. Army liberated the prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp. For many prisoners a new life began. The Dachau Memorial Site took this anniversary as an opportunity to ask survivors to depict their memories of the day of liberation in a video message. ...read more

New staff at the Dachau Memorial Site

Mathilda Schlosser is 19 and comes from near Karlsruhe. Her interest in political and historical subjects motivated her to take up her voluntary year of social service at the Dachau Memorial Site. Before beginning her university studies she wishes to do something useful and contribute to the commemorative work ...read more

Literature tips

Garbe, Detlef; Morsch, Günter (eds.): Kriegsendverbrechen zwischen Untergangschaos und Vernichtungsprogramm. – Berlin: Metropol 2015 (Konzentrationslager: Studien zur Geschichte des NS-Terrors; no. 1) The final phase of the “Third Reich” was accompanied by a scarcely believable increase in terror and violence. There was no murderous action that the Nazis backed away from, ...read more

How many subcamps did the Dachau concentration camp have?

In the historical sources there is no uniform designation used for the subcamps (sometimes they are called work details, labor camps, external work details, subcamps and sub work details). Recent studies have established the term “subcamp” as a uniform designation for those locations outside the grounds of a concentration ...read more