| Original caption: “This pile of clothes belonged to prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp, recently liberated by troops of the United States Seventh Army. Slave laborers were compelled to strip before they were killed.” Killing people on a mass scale through poison gas never took place in the Dachau concentration camp. It remains unexplained as to why the Schutzstaffel (SS) never used the operational gas chamber for this purpose. According to 1 contemporary witness account, some prisoners were killed by poison gas in 1944. These piles of clothes from dead inmates were fumigated using gas, and intended to be recycled to new prisoners upon arrival. In 1942, the crematorium area was constructed next to the main camp. It included the old crematorium and the new crematorium (Barrack X) with a gas chamber. There is no credible evidence that the gas chamber in Barrack X was used to murder human beings. Instead, prisoners underwent “selection” – those who were judged too sick or weak to continue working were sent to the Hartheim “euthanasia” killing center near Linz, Austria. More than 2,500 Dachau prisoners were murdered in the gas chambers at Hartheim. In addition, mass executions by shooting took place, 1st in the bunker courtyard and later in a specially designed SS shooting range. Thousands of Dachau prisoners were murdered there, including at least 4,000 Soviet prisoners of war following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Somewhat secluded from the rest of the camp complex, the SS used the crematorium area as an execution site. Here prisoners were hung or shot in the back of the neck. The victims were mainly members of resistance organizations. A commemorative “path of death” takes visitors past the execution sites and the graves with the ashes. With troops of General Patch’s 7th Army approaching, the SS were also afraid to let inmates remove the steadily accumulating corpses to the mass burial place on the hill. Instead, they just piled up everywhere. For the last several days of its existence, Dachau was a small, self-enclosed universe of decay and death. Between 1933 and 1945, around 41,500 persons died of hunger, exhaustion, and disease, the direct result of being tortured, or were brutally murdered in the Dachau concentration camp and its subcamps. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0555.jpg |
| Image Size | 1.22 MB |
| Image Dimensions | 2928 x 2267 |
| Photographer | Sidney Blau |
| Photographer Title | United States Army Signal Corps |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | April 30, 1945 |
| Location | Konzentrationslager Dachau |
| City | Dachau |
| State or Province | Bavaria |
| Country | Germany |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NWDNS-111-SC-206193 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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