Dachau Monuments

The International Monument

The International Monument with its sculpture representing the horror of the emaciated bodies of the dead victims of the Nazis at the Dachau Concentration Camp, was unveiled in 1968 in front of the center portion of the operations building, now the Museum. It was designed by Nandor Glid and built in honor of the Dachau prisoners who were from 37 different countries.

The prisoners at the Dachau camp were from every country in Europe with the exception of Monaco, according to Marcus J. Smith who wrote that there was a total of 70,000 prisoners liberated by the American Army in the Dachau area, including the prisoners at the satellite camps. On liberation day, there were 1,173 German prisoners, including 6 women, according to the American Army census. These prisoners were either political prisoners or common criminals who were brought to the camp to supervise the other prisoners.

There were 137 "Distinguished Prisoners" and their dependents who were incarcerated at Dachau, including the former Austrian chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg and his 4 year old daughter; the former Jewish French premier, Leon Blum; Italian General Sante Garibaldi; the former Prime Minister of Hungary, Von Kallay; a nephew of Winston Churchill and a relative of Molotov; Protestant Pastor Martin Niemöller; and two German generals who had been arrested in the plot to kill Hitler, General von Halder and General von Flakenhauser.

A modern sculpture at the International Monument uses the colors of the triangles worn by the prisoners to identify the category to which they belonged. Homosexuals, who were sent to a concentration camp for violating German laws, were required to wear a pink cloth triangle sewn to the front of their shirt to identify them to the SS guards. Jehovah's Witnesses, who were put into concentration camps because they refused to serve in the German Army or because they were distributing pamphlets against the Nazi government, had to wear a purple triangle. Blue triangles were for slave laborers brought to the camp from German occupied countries. Jewish prisoners had to wear a yellow triangle with a triangle of another color superimposed on top of it. A red triangle meant that the person wearing it was a political prisoner. Most of the Jews wore a combination of red and yellow triangles. (Jews in the sub-camps of Dachau wore a yellow Star of David with the word Jude written on it in black.) Not shown in the artwork at the Monument are the black triangles which were assigned to asocials, or the green triangles which were for common criminals who were sent to Dachau after completing their regular prison sentence. This information is from the Museum exhibit at the Memorial site. During the liberation of the camp, all the prisoners were set free, including the common criminals.

The dates 1933 - 1945 on the Monument are the dates of the period during which the Nazi Concentration Camp at Dachau was in operation. The camp remained open for another ten years while it was first occupied by German prisoners awaiting trial on charges of being a war criminal and then by 5,000 Displaced Persons, who were some of the German refugees that were expelled from Poland and Czechoslovakia after the war.

Jewish Monuments

There are two small monuments dedicated to the Jewish victims who died at Dachau, including one at the entrance to the small courtyard in front of the gas chamber, which has an inscription in German. Translated into English, it reads: "Think about how we died here." The second monument has three sections with a Menorah on top and a Star of David in the center. This monument stands behind the Crematorium and marks the spot where ashes of the victims were buried by the Nazis.

Unknown Prisoner

When American soldiers found the camp on liberation day their first discovery was the dead bodies "stacked like cord wood" in front of the crematoria building, and across from the building was a birdhouse atop a pole. The birdhouse was mentioned in all the early stories about the camp because it conflicted with other images of the Nazi barbarism at Dachau. The birdhouse is now gone and the Monument to the Unknown Prisoner, a sculpture by Fritz Koelle, stands across from the gas chamber building, known as Barrack X or Baracke X in German. The sculpture shows the emaciated face of a typical starved and over-worked prisoner in the Dachau Concentration Camp. The prisoner's head is shaved; this was done in an effort to control the lice which caused typhus epidemics. The prisoner is wearing wooden shoes, which were sometimes worn in Dachau and other prison camps in the later years when clothing and shoes were scarce. The prisoners were not issued underwear or socks so the wooden shoes caused frequent blisters on their feet, sometimes resulting in painful foot infections.

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