Category Archives: Dachau

Dachau in Words

Dachau Concentration Camp was the first of the Nazi concentration camps established in Germany. It opened in 1933, shortly after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor, and it operated until its liberation by American troops in 1945. Situated just north of Munich, Dachau served as a model for other concentration camps that followed.

Initially, Dachau held political prisoners, particularly those deemed enemies of the Nazi regime, including communists, socialists, trade unionists, and others opposed to Hitler’s ideology. Over time, it became a site for the imprisonment and extermination of various groups, including Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Roma people, among others.

Conditions in Dachau were brutal, with prisoners enduring forced labor, starvation, disease, and systematic abuse. Medical experiments were also conducted on inmates, often resulting in severe suffering and death. The camp’s liberation in April 1945 revealed the extent of the atrocities committed by the Nazis, leading to its designation as a memorial site and a stark reminder of the horrors of the Holocaust. Today, Dachau serves as a memorial and museum, honoring the memory of the victims and educating visitors about the crimes of the Nazi regime.

The liberation of the Dachau Concentration Camp happened on April 29, 1945. om the same day as Hitler married Eva Braun.

The marriage certificate of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun

Below are some testimonies of survivors and liberators.

Henk van de Water, survivor, on the 75th anniversary of the liberation

“I was liberated by the Americans from Dachau concentration camp. I had typhus and was about to die. The liberation should not have happened a day later, because then I would not have survived.
Through all this, I have always experienced freedom very intensely in my further life and tried to get the most out of it.
I was very happy and prepared for the commemorations of 75 years of liberation in Dachau this year. Unfortunately, it is not possible now, but I am now 96 years old and I still hope to experience this at a later date.”


Pierre Rolinet, survivor

“Dear friends,

We former prisoners did not leave the Concentration Camps the same as we entered them. We are marked for life by this event.
All this was planned and organized – to make us disappear. I think that, if the Nazis had won the war, no prisoner would have returned.
Under these extreme living conditions, constantly changing depending on events, each prisoner took a different course more or less depending on chance, at the disposition of other men: SS or Kapos. Life was hanging by a thread, death was always present.
Considered as animals, we were nevertheless able to organize ourselves and resist. Our fraternity and our solidarity permitted some among us to survive this atrocious regime.
In order to prevent that this were to happen again, some survivors decided to give testimony, so that the world would know our living conditions, and to explain, how people in a civilized country could let themselves be conditioned by Nazism and commit unimaginable crimes.
I have long placed the luck of returning home, of being available again, in the service of problems of memory.
On the other hand, the survivors will soon pass on, but luckily their commitment will continue, as there are people to be found in all nations, who are dedicated to carrying on. In this environment, I have re-found this spirit of fraternity and mutual aid which permitted us to endure our suffering and I thank you for it.”


Gerald O. Eaton, liberator

“We had been pushing towards Munich when Dachau was liberated. General Collins sent word that any man who wanted to see why we were fighting should go over. The next morning, we were loaded into trucks for the trip. It was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen. Bodies were stacked in rail cars. We were warned not to feed any survivors, doctors would do that.

At the dedication of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, a man grabbed my arm when he saw my Rainbow tie. He said, I want to thank you. He was a Dachau survivor.”


A letter by Glenn Edward Belcher, a liberator written in 1985. written to his daughter

April 20, 1985

Dear Susan,

You have asked me to set down in writing some of the things I remember about Dachau. It’s difficult. It was just about 40 years ago today that I was there and as a consequence of the time interval, I can’t be absolutely certain as to the accuracy of that which I believe I saw and did.

Our division (the 42nd Infantry – about 15,000 men) was heading for the city of Munich, and as I recall we were going across a wide expanse of level land, and over to the left I saw what appeared to be a large factory which was enclosed by a wall — to the best of my recollection this was my first view of Dachau although I didn’t know it at the time and we did not stop.

While crossing this level land we were overtaken by (what seemed to me like) hundreds of American tanks. I read somewhere later that this was the 20th Tank Corps and that they had been ordered to overtake us and enter Munich first. The dust, noise, and confusion was one thing I recall – for some reason or another, I have a recollection of Munich being exactly 17 kilometers from Dachau. Whether this is the correct distance – or why I remember it as such is beyond my comprehension.

I don’t recall where I spent the night but I do remember being in Munich early the next day – strange – I found a book there about the 1936 Olympics and remember looking at Jesse Owen’s picture. For some unknown reason—me and several other guys in our company were loaded into the back of a truck and driven out of the city. We were taken to Dachau.

I don’t know how long we stayed there or what we were supposed to do there – but I do recall that we went back to Munich later that same night.

Now for Dachau – we saw nothing unusual from a distance – some smoke coming out of smokestacks – you couldn’t see inside the walls or whatever the enclosure was. We got out of the truck and walked toward a gate (wide enough for a vehicle).

Before we got to the gate we found a railroad siding with a bunch of box cars on it. Some of the doors to the box cars were open and as we got closer to them I saw that they were piled up with emaciated bodies – it seemed to me that they were lying on top of each other and piled up to a depth of 4 or 5 feet. As I walked toward the end of the train toward the gate I saw a dead German soldier and beside him a rifle that was broken in half. I recall supposing that someone had hit him so hard with the rifle that it had killed him and broken the rifle.

We went in the gate and there was some people inside – as the day went on more and more people came. I didn’t know who they were at the time but found out later that some of them were war correspondents – as you probably know from your journalism studies many of them traveled with front-line troops.

Just inside the gate and to the right was a high wire enclosure—it was filled with big, mean-looking dogs who were barking like hell – this went on all the time I was there. I recall hoping that nobody turned them loose – this was before I saw all the other unthinkable things. I never ever saw any mention of those dogs in anything I ever read.

Immediately in front of me after entering the gate – and about 20 yards away was a moat with water in it about 4 or 5 feet wide – a dead soldier was laying face down in it. Just beyond the moat was a high fence – I’d guess it to be 8 or 10 feet high – I understood it was electrified. On the other side of the fence was a valley which was about 20 feet wide and 8 or 10 feet deep – on the other side of the valley were barracks and those locked up.

We did not talk to the prisoners and they did not talk to us – between us, there was a moat, an electrified fence, and a steep up-and-down valley. We stared at them and they stared at us. It was as if they didn’t know what to do and neither did we.

On our side of the fence and to the right of where the dogs were – were the gas chambers and ovens where people were killed and then burned. There were stacks of bodies (all looked like skeletons) apparently prepared for burning.

There was a long walk (cement) and roadway (black-top) to the right of the ovens which ran alongside the moat and fence that I mentioned before – it ran the entire length of the compound and I would guess it to be between 1/4 and 1/2 mile in length. Down toward the end of this, I saw a big cart – the kind you used to see around railroad depots. It was filled with bread and was being taken into the prisoners.

Why I should remember this I don’t know—but near this wagon of bread was a woman and a man who were dressed in civilian clothes rather than the striped uniforms that other prisoners wore. They seemed to be in much better health than all the others. Somebody told me that this couple was Kurt Von Schussnig and his wife – and that prior to becoming a prisoner he was the Chancellor of Austria. Whether this is true or not I would have no way of knowing – but this is what comes out of my not-so-good memory.

In retrospect, I suppose we should have done something immediately to ease the prisoners’ pain or to free them from their confinement—but on the other hand, perhaps we were all too shocked by the gruesome discovery to be anything other than immobilized. The only people at that time who were not immobilized were a few prisoners who threw themselves into the fences I told you about earlier. I understand that shortly after I was there guards were established to prevent them from doing this – but neither myself nor others with me did anything.

I’ve already told you about picking up the orange-colored thermos bottle at Dachau—and discarding it a few days later—I wasn’t the only one who did this. I think all of us who were sent out to Dachau that day wanted to get it out of sight – and out of mind as quickly as we could. I don’t think any of us were successful despite the fact that to the best of my knowledge, not a single person who was there with me ever discussed it with me – nor I with them. I even went so far as to not even mention it in my letters to your mother.

As I sit here and write this I am reminded of a monumental inconsistency. During the war, as we traveled through German-occupied territory it was common for us to encounter slave laborers in both cities and the countryside. We did the natural thing and released them—there was joy and celebration on both sides. I guess as I said before—Dachau was too much—all we were capable of doing was staring and being immobilized.

The Jewish people and all the rest of us should continue to try to encourage all of us to remember places like Dachau – despite my own constant push to repress that which is so horrible, I too would like to forget but I can’t quite cut it. Perhaps I should be more upbeat like Mr. Reagan.

Your asking me to do this has been helpful – it makes me feel more thankful for what is as opposed to what used to be and what was.

Warmest regards to you and Frank, and the kids.

Love, Mom & Dad

P.S. You suggested taking a half-hour for this. It took about 4…





Sources

Glenn Edward Belcher: Dachau Liberator
Messages by survivors and liberators
Glenn Edward Belcher: Dachau Liberator

Donation

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Amongst the Poplar Trees—A Dachau Poem

Last year in June, I had the chance to visit Dachau, for lack of a better word, it was the highlight of my year. Strangely enough, it inspired me—in a creative way.

In shadows cast by history’s hand,
Where sorrow’s echo still commands,
Lies a place where darkness roams,
A haunting tale of Dachau’s home.

Amongst the polar trees, a silent vow,
Whispers of souls in silence now,
Where barbed wire weaves its somber tale,
And cries of anguish still prevail.

In Dachau’s fields, where freedom fell,
A solemn hymn, a tolling bell,
Where names are etched on walls of stone,
Each one is a story, each one alone.

The winds that sweep through rusted wire,
Carry echoes of a world on fire,
Of faces etched with silent screams,
Lost within a torment’s seams.

Yet in this place of deepest pain,
Springs forth a hope, a gentle strain,
For memory’s flame can never die,
Though shadows loom, it still can fly.

So let us honor those who fell,
Their stories are whispered, we retell,
In Dachau’s solemn, hallowed ground,
Where peace and memory are found.

A Letter to the Millions

Limerick, Ireland, February 25, 2024

To all those souls murdered between 1933 and 1945,

I wish I could tell you, the hate that murdered you, died with you, but that would be a lie.

That hate never died, for a while it was dormant, but it was always simmering in the background. Some people say that none of you were murdered. They say it is all some conspiracy theory.

When I asked them ‘How do you explain the murder of Arthur Kahn, a 21-year-old Jewish German medical student, the first victim of the Holocaust, who was murdered on April 12, 1933. A murder that is well documented? They just dismiss the question and fail to answer.

When I ask how they explain the murder of Bernard André van Vlijmen, a 15-year-old boy whose date of death is May 9,1945, a day after VE day? They ask for documents.

When I show them, they say “That’s no proof”

When I asked them about the other groups, who were murdered during the Holocaust, they just denied it or said that it was actually the allies who killed them, collateral damage. Then I tell them about my grandfather who was either executed or driven to suicide. They dismiss that as him having mental health issues. About my uncle who died because of mistreatment and medicines being denied, they say he would have died anyway.

Their hate comes from indifference and ignorance, it is the type of hate that is impossible to fight, but I try, for you.

For a while the hate seemed to have disappeared, but it resurfaced on a large scale on October 7,2023. When Hams terrorists waged the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust slaughtering babies, raping women, burning whole families alive, and taking hundreds of innocent civilians hostage. One would think people would be outraged, and they were for a while, less than 24 hours really, Then that rage turned to the Jews once again.

Of course, no one wants to see innocent lives being killed, but people forget who started it. They forget because it is convenient.

No, I don’t agree with a great number of the actions of the Israeli prime minister, he naively fell into a trap. However, when I hear the UN and other organisations and governments, being only one-sided in the condemnation of the violence, what choice does he have.

I hope that peace will be found. I always thought that love would conquer all, but now I am not so sure any more, I keep hoping because without hope we have nothing.

For now, to those millions who were murdered, I will continue to keep telling your stories. Hoping that something will be learned from history.

Yours truly,

Dirk de Klein

A gentile with a Jewish heart.





Source

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/135472325/bernard-andr%C3%A9-van_vlijmen

Josef Hartinger-A Forgotten Hero

It is easy to say that all Germans in the Third Reich were bad , but that would be a great mistake to make. The majority weren’t bad, and many were victims like so many others. Yes, many had become complacent and were seduced by the promises made by Hitler, However, not everyone subscribed to the ideology of the Nazis. Some even highly placed officials, saw what the Nazis were and tried to do something about it.

On March 22 mArthur Kahn together with Ernst Goldmann, Rudolf Benario, and Erwin Kahn(not related), were arrested , for being communist party members and were send to Dachau.

Upon arrival in Dachau, the men were identified as Jews and tortured. On April 11, 1933 a group of drunken SS officers handed the four young men shovels and made them march to the outskirts of the camp, where they were executed Arthur Kahn was the first one shot. Making him the first Holocaust victim.

Josef Michael Hartinger was a German lawyer who worked for the Bavarian State authorities in the latter years of the Weimar Republic when the Nazis came to power. Tasked with investigating some unnatural deaths at the Dachau concentration camp near Munich, Hartinger together with his medical examiner colleague, Moritz Flamm , discovered the SS policy of summary executions and faked suicides at the camp. At great risk to his own safety, Hartinger issued an indictment of the camp authorities, which was ultimately betrayed and suppressed.

Hartinger’s goal was to obtain a conviction for a chain-of-command order for the multiple murders that had occurred in the first weeks of the camp’s operation.

In 1933 Hilmar Wäckerle was picked by his old friend Himmler to be commandant of the newly established Dachau concentration camp. Under orders from Himmler, he established ‘special’ rules for dealing with prisoners, rules that instituted terror as a way of life at the camp.

Suspecting SS accounts immediately, Hartinger investigated the camp deaths as homicides, getting proof from autopsies by an equally courageous medical examiner, Dr. Moritz Flamm. Hartinger was a gifted and competent lawyer. He had also demonstrated courage in the First World War, and pugnacity in his legal prosecutions. Despite the danger to his person and the hesitation of his superiors, Hartinger showed both fastidious professionalism and moral courage in building his case against the murderers at Dachau.

On 11 April when an SS detachment took four Jewish prisoners out of the grounds and, after beating them badly, shot them in the back of the head. The murder victims were reported as “shot while trying to escape”.

Camp commandant Hilmar Wäckerle showed them to a spot where the four prisoners were shot while trying to escape into the woods and later to a shed where three of their bodies were piled on the floor. Hartinger berated the guards on the undignified treatment of the bodies before, he told them “That is not how you treat a human being” Hartinger and Dr. Flamm set about identifying and examining them. They quickly noted that all the dead prisoners were Jewish and had been shot at the base of the skull. Erwin Kahn survived the escape shooting but four days later died while under SS guard in hospital. Without challenging the guards on these points, the investigators returned over several days to carefully document the evidence, with Flamm performing autopsies on the four prisoners. Hartinger and Flamm noted many inconsistencies between the injuries on the corpses and the camp guards’ accounts of the deaths.

With each visit, they had more and more deaths to investigate, such as the case of Sebastian Nefzger, a camp guard, who had allegedly committed suicide] The autopsy showed his back severely bruised all over and evidence of internal bleeding. He had allegedly tried to hang himself with the straps of his own prosthetic leg and when that failed, he had inflicted cuts on his own wrists so deep that they penetrated the bone. The autopsy of the lawyer Alfred Strauss, who was also shot trying to escape, revealed that he died of a bullet in the neck after suffering serious physical attacks. His back was covered with lacerations and his buttocks bandaged to hide a deep cut.

By German law ,at the time, the SS had committed crimes, because they were not legally a police force or even military force yet. When Hartinger showed his findings to his boss, Karl Wintersberger, he refused to sign the documents to start the indictments.

Wintersberger, a chief prosecutor who a decade before had intrepidly and successfully tried Nazi thugs, now lost his nerve, giving Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, and Hitler the opportunity to intervene to protect their henchmen. This didn’t stop Hartinger though.

In June 1933, Hartinger reduced the scope of the dossier to the four clearest cases. Johann Kantschuster was accused of murdering Alfred Strauss. Karl Ehmann was accused of murdering Leonhard Hausmann. The murderer of Louis Schloss and Sebastian Nefzer could not be identified so charges were brought against Wäckerle, Nürnbergk and Mutzbauer for abetting the murder and obstructing investigation.Wintersberger signed it, after first notifying SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler as a courtesy.

The killings at Dachau suddenly stopped temporarily, Wäckerle was transferred to Stuttgart and replaced by Theodor Eicke. The indictment and related evidence reached the office of the Bavarian Justice Minister, Hans Frank, but was intercepted by Gauleiter Adolf Wagner and locked away in a desk only to be discovered by the US Army after the war.

In 1946 files of the missing indictment were discovered by the US Army in the Bavarian Justice Ministry and were used in evidence in the trials of senior Nazis at the Nürnberg tribunal of 1947. Flamm’s thoroughly gathered and documented evidence within Hartinger’s indictment ensured it achieved convictions of senior Nazis such as Oswald Pohl. Wintersberger’s complicit behaviour is documented in his own evidence to the Pohl Trial.

What makes this story particularly poignant is the fact that Arthur Kahn, a 21-year-old Jewish German medical student had enrolled in Edinburgh University in Scotland, he had returned to , Germany to pick up his student records at the University of Wurzburg. Instead of finishing his studies, he became the first victim of the Holocaust.

Another thing that struck me in 1933 British Newspapers were already reporting about the killings in Dachau, 6 years before the war started.

Last night I watched a documentary where the story of Josef Hartinger was mentioned, in it, historian Timothy W. Ryback said “It is said ‘if we had 1000 Oskar Schindlers ,the Holocaust would not have happened. I say if we had 100 Hartingers the Holocaust would not have happened” I tend to agree with him.

sources

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/hitlers-first-victims

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-wisconsin-jewish-chronicle-16-more-j/11869954

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/12/hitlers-first-victims-and-one-mans-race-for-justice-timothy-ryback-review

Munich, 1933: The Good Bureaucrat, Josef Hartinger

My Interview with Lynn H. Friedman—Daughter of Holocaust Survivors

Lynn is a psychotherapist and clinical social worker. She is the daughter of two Holocaust survivors. In the interview, we discuss the mental impact her parents’ ordeal had on her and also how that translated into her work as a psychotherapist. She was voted The Best Therapist of 2008 by the Main Line Times newspaper in Pennsylvania, USA, and she specializes in anxiety, trauma, PTSD, and grief.

The story of her parents isn’t just a story of survival. It is a story of kindness and bitterness, a love story, a story of perseverance. It is also a tale of despair and disappointment but in equal measure—a story of victory and hope.

Lynn sent me a number of documents relating to her father, Wicek Friedman, which changed to Victor Friedman. That fact on its own is a good indication that after the Holocaust, the struggle continued—changing your name is not something you do lightly. I presume he changed it to make it easier for the people in his adopted land to be able to pronounce his name. I say adopted land because that is what struck me when I saw the document of the Displace Persons registration (photo at the top), which says, “Does not want to return.” He was born in Krakow, Poland on October 5, 1925.

Victor survived Auschwitz (where he escaped), Sachsenhausen, and Dachau. Lynn received the following information about her father from the International Tracing Service.

“Your father was in Auschwitz Concentration Camp where he had two prisoner numbers, 110225 and 199815. At the beginning of May 1944, he was arrested in Kolozsvár, Hungary, and sent by the Security Police in Budapest to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp in Germany. On November 17, 1944, Wicek was transported to Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany. His Dachau prisoner number was 127009.”

Lynn’s mother, Ella, had also been in Dachau. She was born in Berehova, Berkstad, Czechoslovakia in 1927. After she saw how Victor had been tortured for stealing potato skins to give to those who were starving, she told a friend, “Do you see that brave man—if he survives, I will marry him.”

They did get married in 1950.

Victor and Ella had different outlooks after the war. Victor, although he survived, had many medical complications due to the torture he received in Dachau. Victor’s aim was to replace the horrors he witnessed with acts of kindness. Sadly, he passed away in 1974, just before his 49th birthday. What saddened me to hear is that Victor knew that the hate against the Jews had not disappeared after the Holocaust. He advised his daughter to always be ready to leave.

Ella was basically always in survivor mode as she didn’t show love towards her children. That is not uncommon with survivors—and in a way—it is understandable because she had lost many of her family. She probably was afraid to get too attached again.

She had lied about her age when she was taken to Dachau, giving her year of birth as 1929, but in fact, it was 1927. She reckoned she would have a better chance of survival if the Nazis thought she was younger. Her younger sister had been murdered by the Nazis when she was at the train station—they shot her. Ella passed away in 2017.

This is Lynn speaking about her parents, and it’s just as important as her own experiences.




Source

https://www.ancestry.com.au/genealogy/records/victor-friedman-24-4svr3p

Dachau 1933-2023

“On March 22, 1933, a few weeks after Adolf Hitler had been appointed Reich Chancellor, a concentration camp for political prisoners was set up in Dachau. This camp served as a model for all later concentration camps and as a “school of violence” for the SS men under whose command it stood. In the twelve years of its existence over 200.000 persons from all over Europe were imprisoned here and in the numerous subsidiary camps. 41.500 were murdered. On April 29 1945, American troops liberated the survivors.”

The camp commander gives a speech to prisoners about to be released as part of a pardoning action near Christmas 1933.

The text at the start is from the official Dachau memorial site. It is a reminder that Dachau was the pilot for so many horrors, and 90 years later, people are still shocked and upset by it.

I had the opportunity to visit Dachau this summer. Our tour guide was Irish. I had considered asking him if people took him seriously as a tour guide, coming from a country which wasn’t really involved in World War II. I decided not to ask him.

I have often been asked before and even accused of writing about the Holocaust without ever having visited a concentration camp. And, because I am not Jewish, my motives are questioned. In the past, I have tried defending myself, but I stopped. Just because I am not Jewish—doesn’t mean that World War II had no impact on me. It did! The execution of my paternal grandfather by the Nazis has always been like a dark cloud that has followed me throughout my life. The experiences my parents, aunts, and uncles had during the five years of occupation have also left an impression on me.

The first prisoner transport in a bus, arrives at the gatehouse of the former factory grounds. (Municipal archives Munich)

In June of this year, I was on a short holiday in Munich and decided to visit Dachau too. I appreciate that this might be the wrong expression, but I know no other way to describe it. It was the highlight of this year.

I know people say “Never Again” or “Never Forget,” but as time goes on these words become hollower and hollower, up to the point where they have no real value because people don’t actually care anymore.

I just want to repeat the story of the first man to die in Dachau.

Arthur Kahn, a 21-year-old Jewish German medical student—enrolled at Edinburgh University in Scotland, had returned to Germany to pick up his student records at the University of Wurzburg.

Arthur Kahn, together with Ernst Goldmann, Rudolf Benario, and Erwin Kahn(not related), had been arrested around the 22nd of March 1933, for being members of the Communist party and sent to Dachau. Although Arthur Kahn had no Communist affiliation, he had at been at one point involved in an anti-Nazi organization.

Upon arrival in Dachau, the men were identified as Jews and tortured. On 12 April, a group of drunken SS officers handed the four young men shovels and made them march to the outskirts of the camp and executed. Arthur Kahn was the first one shot, which made him the first Holocaust victim, according to historian Timothy Ryback. Goldman and Benario followed and died immediately. Erwin Kahn was also shot but died from his injuries four days later in a nearby hospital. He did get a chance to make a statement disputing that the four men had tried to escape, for that was the reason given for the executions.

Postwar investigation established that Robert Erspenmüller, the camp’s deputy commander, and two other SS guards, Hans Burner and Max Schmidt, committed the murders. The next morning, the remaining Dachau prisoners were alarmed by the sound of the shots and fearful of what they portended. They were informed the four prisoners had been shot while trying to escape.

For me, the visit to Dachau is something that I will never forget.

Sources

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/dachau-the-first-days-the-holocaust-12682

Dachau Concentration Camp 1933–1945

https://www.hmd.org.uk/resource/29-april-1945-liberation-of-dachau-concentration-camp/

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/dachau

Donation

I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

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The Testimony of Rabbi Abraham Judah Klausner

Abraham Judah Klausner was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 27, 1915, one of five children of Joseph Klausner, a Hungarian immigrant who owned a dry goods store, and Tillie Binstalk Klausner, an Austrian immigrant. He was raised in Denver, Colorado. He graduated from the University of Denver in 1938 and was ordained at Hebrew Union College in 1941. He joined the US Army as a Chaplain and was there when Dachau was liberated. He was assigned to join the 116th Evacuation Hospital, which had just entered Dachau. He helped to find bedding and food, including kosher provisions, for the 32,000 survivors.

These are just some of his experiences of that time:
“Well, I came into Dachau at night and saw nothing except the main square coming through the big gates.

And of course, I waited for the morning quite anxiously, and when morning came, I walked through the barbed-wire gates into the barracks area and selected one of the barracks. I entered it and there met the first of the survivors. It was a difficult experience for me because I was not confident that I could serve a purpose. I had nothing to offer. I had nothing to give. People needed amenities, needed attention of various kinds, and I had nothing. But nevertheless, there I was in Dachau and I felt I had to do something, and so I entered the barracks and stood there, terribly disturbed. Here we were in a period of liberation and the people were still in barracks, stretched out on shelves. There were three rows of shelves, nothing other than the shelves. There wasn’t a…a piece of linen of any kind. There wasn’t a bar of soap. There wasn’t a chair or a place to sit down. It was just a…a dirty situation. There were people either stretched out on the shelves or moving about listlessly. Paid no attention to me as if I didn’t exist. No one came towards me to say, ‘Welcome,’ or, ‘What is it you want?’ They just, uh…I was just an apparition.”

“The, compulsion, or the drive, was so great that people broke out of camps and walked, traveled–there weren’t any forms of transportation across Czechoslovakia, Poland, into Russia–looking for, uh, for, for fragments of families. And people came out of east Europe into Munich, and we set up a large tracing program. Besides the, the books that were published, we had a center in Munich at the Deutsches Museum first where people came from all over Europe and came asking about their family. Interesting thing was that we put a table out in the lobby, so to speak. People would come and tear the pages out of the book and we would have to feed the table with books and then we would nail the pages down so they would last a little longer. But if a person came and found no name in the, in the book, they would go over to the wall–it was a very large wall–and they’d write a note on the wall saying, for example, “I was here”—addressing it to a parent or to a child–“I’ve been looking for you, and I will be here or going there,” so that there’d be some point at which they might be able to connect. We were very much involved in looking for children in eastern Europe. People who had left their children either with Christian friends or others wanted to find those children and so we had to set up a program for the search of children, which was haphazard but in many cases it was very effective.”




Sources

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/en/a-z/oral-history

https://www.accidentaltalmudist.org/heroes/2019/04/17/the-survivors-rabbi/

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I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

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Kaufering IV—Hurlach Concentration Camp Subcamp

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The Kaufering IV—Hurlach Subcamp was one of 169 subcamps belonging to the Dachau Concentration Camp system. It had several names—KZ Schwabmünchen/Kaufering IV or KZ Hurlach. Whatever we call it, it did not matter as it was a place of evil.

The camp was liberated at the end of April 1945 by a unit of the 143rd Reg. Inf. of the 36th Inf. On 29 April, there were 3,000 prisoners in the camp.

At the turn of the year (1944/45), the Kaufering IV—Hurlach subcamp was converted into the death camp of the camp complex and placed under quarantine, initially with around 1,400 prisoners and in April 1945 over 3,000 prisoners. Running rampant were Intestinal diseases, oedema, scabies, weakness, typhus and pulmonary tuberculosis. There was hardly any medicine, bandages or medical instruments, and even a lack of laundry. An interned doctor wrote that for his medical work, he was limited to issuing death certificates and labelling the corpses. 100 to 200 people died every week in the camp alone. When the US Army liberated the subcamp, the soldiers encountered the still-smoking rubble of the huts, which had been set on fire by the SS upon their departure. In these, they found 360 dead, who were possibly burned alive. It is believed that J.D. Salinger, author of The Catcher In The Rye, was one of the liberators. His daughter Margaret Salinger recalled her father telling her:
“You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose entirely, no matter how long you live.”

During the evacuation, the prisoners were loaded onto a train as they were too sick to walk towards Dachau on the nearby track. This train had been used by the SS as cover for an anti-aircraft platoon and was hit by an Allied low-flying attack, killing 180 prisoners. The train returned to Kaufering to unload the dead on the railway embankment.

On the morning of 27 April 1945, the camp doctor, Max Blancke, ordered the SS to set fire to the Kaufering IV Concentration Camp and the prisoners who were unable to walk. The American army reached the camp a few hours later. The liberation was portrayed in Steven Spielberg’s Band of Brothers.

When the 12th Armored Division and 101st Airborne Division arrived at Kaufering IV on 27/28 April, respectively, the soldiers discovered some 500 dead inmates. In the days that followed—the US Army units ordered the local townspeople to bury the dead.

Sources

https://blog.jewishphilly.org/jd-salinger

https://de-academic.com/dic.nsf/dewiki/730753

https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/bronnen?term=Kaufering&tab=foto
https://collections.ushmm.org/search/?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=hurlach&search_field=all_fields

https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1065919

Donation

I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

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My Interview with Michael Ruskin—Author of “The Vow: A Love Story & The Holocaust”

The vow:

David whispered in Dora’s ear.

“No matter where they take us, we will meet back here in the Square, when this is over. Stay strong my Love, and know my thoughts and prayers are with you.”

​Dora replied with tears in her eyes.

“I love you David and I will pray every night that God keeps us safe and brings us home to each other.”

I had the privilege to talk to Michael Ruskin last night. We talked about his book, The Vow: A Love Story & the Holocaust and how it came about.

It is the truly amazing story about his parents and how they survived the Holocaust, after being persecuted in Lithuania and later on in Dachau and Stutthof. Like so many other Holocaust stories, there was unimaginable horror. Michael’s sister was murdered when she was only 3.5 years, taken from her mother after a struggle, where she was knocked out by a butt of a gun.

It is also a story of hope, courage and faith and the miraculous reunion.

Michael only discovered the documents describing his parents ordeal, decades after the Holocaust.

The book is available on

https://www.thevowalovestory.com/

This is the interview:



Source

https://www.thevowalovestory.com/