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—— ON THIS DAY ——
APRIL 29, 1945
Dachau, Bavaria, Germany
81 years ago
The gate at Dachau concentration camp bearing the inscription 'Arbeit Macht Frei' (Work Sets You Free) — the entrance through which U.S. troops passed on April 29, 1945.
On April 29, 1945, soldiers of the U.S. 45th Infantry Division and 42nd Infantry Division reached Dachau — the first Nazi concentration camp, opened in 1933, located ten miles northwest of Munich. What they found there was beyond the preparation of any training, any briefing, or any prior understanding of what the regime they had been fighting had actually been doing.
The camp held approximately 32,000 prisoners, many in severe states of starvation and illness. Piles of corpses lay throughout the camp — some in freight cars at the entrance, others stacked near the crematoria. The American soldiers had seen combat across North Africa, Sicily, and through France and Germany. Several veterans later recorded that nothing in their military experience had come close to preparing them for what they entered on April 29, 1945.
—— MARQUEE EVENT ——
Survivors of Dachau greeting American liberating forces, April 29, 1945 — one of the most documented moments of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps.
What happened in the first hours after liberation has been documented and disputed ever since. A significant number of SS guards were killed by American soldiers — some in what the Army officially classified as combat, some apparently executed after having surrendered. A formal Army investigation was opened, then closed. The question of whether the killings constituted war crimes has been debated by military historians for decades. The soldiers who carried them out have described, in oral histories, a state of rage and grief that made the concept of 'appropriate conduct' feel remote from anything they were experiencing.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who visited the newly liberated camps at Ohrdruf and Buchenwald in April 1945, gave an instruction that revealed both his understanding of what he was seeing and his anticipation of the future: he ordered that as many soldiers as possible be brought to see the camps, that photographs and film be made immediately, and that German civilians from surrounding towns be forced to walk through and witness what had been done in their name. 'I want the evidence so complete,' he said, 'that nothing can be denied.'
Dachau had operated for twelve years — from 1933 to 1945. It was the first camp, the model for all subsequent camps, and the training ground for SS personnel who went on to staff the extermination camps of the east. More than 41,000 people died there. It had been visible to the residents of Dachau and Munich throughout the entire period of its operation. The trains had passed through the town. The smoke had risen. The sounds had been audible. The knowledge, in various degrees, had been available. What was done with that knowledge varied.
—— WHY THIS MATTERS ——
The liberation of Dachau and the other Nazi camps is the moment the Holocaust became undeniable. Until April and May 1945, it was possible for people to claim ignorance or disbelief. The liberation — documented in photographs, film, and the testimony of thousands of American and British soldiers — made denial operationally impossible. That it subsequently became politically possible again is one of the most disquieting facts about the 20th century.
Eisenhower's documentation order was one of the most consequential bureaucratic decisions in the history of human rights. The photographs, film, and testimony he ordered preserved became the evidentiary foundation of the Nuremberg trials and the primary historical record of the Holocaust. The scale of the documentation was a direct response to his belief that people would try to deny it.
The question of what German civilians knew is a historical question that is still not fully resolved — and that matters beyond Germany. The relationship between citizens and atrocities committed by their governments, the psychology of not-seeing, the moral status of those who benefit from crimes they do not stop — these questions did not end in 1945.
—— THE TAKEAWAY ——
On April 29, 1945, American soldiers who had fought across three continents walked into a German concentration camp and found something that their entire prior experience of the world had not prepared them to understand. Eisenhower knew immediately that what they had found had to be documented with absolute completeness, because the world would try to forget. He was right about that. We are still doing what he asked — remembering.
—— QUOTE OF THE DAY ——
"I have never felt able to describe my emotional reactions when I first came face to face with indisputable evidence of Nazi brutality. I have never at any other time experienced an equal sense of shock."
— General Dwight D. Eisenhower, following his visit to the Ohrdruf concentration camp, April 12, 1945
—— OUR QUIZ OF THE DAY ——
How much do you know about Dachau, the liberation of Nazi concentration camps, Eisenhower's documentation order, and the Nuremberg trials that followed?
