Visits to Dachau

A collection of testimonies, 1933-present

part of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site website
by Prof. Harold Marcuse (homepage)

page begun Sept. 20, 2004; updated 9/12/05; still under construction

In my research I have come across many testimonies about people who have visited the Dachau concentration camp and memorial site, from when the former was opened in 1933 to its liberation in 1945, and over the many decades since then. This page provides access to stories I found on published in books, articles and on the web, and recounted in unpublished sources and interviews I have collected. They are arranged chronologically.

Visits to Dachau, 1933-April 1945 (back to top)

• May 1942: Abbé Jean Bernard from Luxemburg described a visit in his 1945 memoir Pfarrerblock 25487. Another section of his memoir was made into the 2004 feature film The Ninth Day (Der neunte Tag). My visit page also compares the memoir and film.

Visits to Dachau, May 1945-May 1949 (back to top)

• May 1945 by Martha Gellhorn, journalist and onetime wife of Ernest Hemingway. Her 1945 article was republished in her book The Face of War (NY: Simon & Shuster, 1959, 1986, 1998); excerpt in "Ohne Mich: Why I Shall Never Return to Germany," Granta, issue 42(Dec. 1992). See also Granta's Gellhorn author biography.
• May 1, 1945 by Don Rodda. 2002 reminiscence
• August 1945 by Robert Powers, soldier in the 411th regiment of the 103rd division. See photos on Arthur J. Clayton's web site (scroll down) from Powers' 1994 book: Holocaust: the story of 103d Infantry Division (reprinted 1997, copies at USHMM, LC, and Montgomery County, Texas). Note especially the photo of the adage on the crematorium wall: "Cleaniness here is a duty. Don't forget to wash your hands."
• Sept. 1945 by Robert Monson, pilot in the 98th Bomb Wing, 9th Air Force. His niece provided me with a copy of his Sept. 18, 1945 letter home.
• November 1945 by Martin Niemoeller, famous anti-Nazi Protestant pastor who was imprisoned in Dachau from 1940 to 1945. See the summary of the narrative Niemoeller told in sermons in 1945-46 that I wrote in my book Legacies of Dachau.

Visits to Dachau, June 1949-Sept. 1955 (back to top)

Visits to Dachau, Oct. 1955-Feb. 1960(back to top)

Visits to Dachau, March 1960-Jan. 1965 (back to top)

Visits to Dachau, Feb. 1965-1975 (back to top)

Visits to Dachau, 1976-1990 (back to top)

• A 1996 visit to Dachau by Maria Ritter prompted her return to Europe in 1998, which led to her book Return to Dresden (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004).
  • March 2005 H-Net review by Andy Spencer: "The impetus for committing this attempt at a family history to paper was a visit to Dachau undertaken in 1996 and the inevitable questions that visit prompted: How much did my parents know? Why, as people of faith, did they not protest? Why were the children told so little? Most importantly, Ritter wants to investigate the psychological trauma she herself has suffered as a result of her own ignorance, which cloaks her earliest experiences."

Visits to Dachau, 1991-2004 (back to top)