Real History and the camp at Dachau

The International Campaign for Real History

What really went on at the Nazi concentration camp, Dachau, before (and after) April 1945?

January 28, 1998

Photo: Gastight shower door at Dachau camp.

January 28, 1998

Mr. Erich Brudehl
1068 Keentz Rd.
Chehalis, Washington 98532
Dear Mr. Brudehl:
This letter is in response to your query as to whether there were any working gas chambers in Dachau and if any people were gassed. The following is taken from the Encyclopedia of the Third Reich (New York: MacMillan, 1991) article on Dachau:
"Dachau was not planned as an extermination camp; its prisoners were shot trying to escape or died of hunger, disease, and exhaustion, under torture or as victims of pseudoscientific experiments After the decision for the Final Solution, a crematorium, including a gas chamber - whose use, however, cannot be proved - was built in 1942. By November 1944, 3,225 physically and. mentally handicapped prisoners had been transferred to the euthanasia facility at Hartheim Castle and gassed."
This is consistent with other accounts of Dachau by scholars. American troops did claim that people were gassed there, but after Dachau trials and historical study, the consensus seems to be that people were routinely executed in many incredibly cruel ways, but not gassed.
Hope this helps and I would encourage you to do more research than I was able to do here with our limited staff and time.
Sincerely,
Steven Vitto,
Library Technician
Holocaust Memorial Council
100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW Washington, DC 20024&emdash;2150, Telephone (202) 488-0400, Fax (202) 488-2690

United States Erich Brudehl Holocaust Memorial Museum 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW. Washington, DC. 20024 - 2150 1068 Koontz Rd. Chehalis, Wash. 98532 attn.: Mr Steven Vitto Febr. 12, 1998

Dear Sirs:

Thanks for your letter from Jan. 1998 and for your encouragment to do some research on my own.

As part of this, my research, I still have a few questions I like to ask you:

1.) Why do you display a casting of a gas chamber door and not an original one?
2.) Does that casting in your Museum show the inside door handle latch, whereby you can open the door from the inside as well from the outside, like the one inMajdanek does, where you took your casting from?
3.) Where were the extermionation camps located in Germany?
4.) Was Auschwitz in Poland an extermination camp?

For your answers to my questions I do thank you very much.

˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ Sincerely, Erich Brudehl

Now see: Albert Doyle's own investigations into the Dachau massacre and visit the site put up about Sgt. William Heller, US war photographer: this includes one close-up photos of German soldiers shot at the wall.
For further photographs of what they call the "excecutions" at Dachau, visit the US Holocaust Memorial Museum website.
US Holocaust museum confirms there were never any working gas chambers in Dachau and no people were gassed there.
GI describes on Internet how US Army erected an enlarged crematoria at Dachau post-war
Book "The Rock of Anzio: The 45th Infantry Division in World War II" by Flint Whitlock describes liberation of Dachau camp, 1945.

write to David Irving