Dachau concentration camp

Established in March 1933, Dachau was among the first of the Nazi concentration camps. It was located 12 miles north of Munich and was originally intended as a "correctional" facility for those who spoke out against the regime of Adolf Hitler or who were for other reasons regarded as socially undesirable. Between its opening in 1933 and the end of the war in May 1945, some 225,000 persons had been inmates at the prison. Official Nazi records list 31,950 deaths, although this figure is certainly much too low. While Jews were among those incarcerated here, Dachau also housed political prisoners, including the former Austrian chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg and various German anti-Nazi activists. Dachau was the scene of atrocities that included so-called medical experiments, the most notorious of which involved deliberately infecting inmate test subjects with malaria and also measuring the effects of immersion in cold water for long periods. The former work was supposed to contribute to developing vaccines and other measures to protect German troops against malaria, and the latter "experiments" were intended to assist pilots downed in the icy North Atlantic.