⚠️ Historical Documentation Notice
Historical Documentation Notice

This document is part of a historical archive and is presented for scholarly research and educational purposes.

The content reflects historical perspectives and should be understood within its historical context.

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.

©
Focal Point
1999
write to David Irving