International Monument at Dachau

In the photograph below you can see the east wing of the administration building behind a short wall on the east side of the International Monument. In front of the wall is a box of ashes of the victims of the Dachau concentration camp, which was placed here on May 7, 1967, the same day that the Jewish Memorial building was dedicated. The letters on the wall say "Never Again" in five different languages.

The International Monument has a wide ramp which slopes down to the base of the sculpture designed by Nandor Glid. On the west side of the ramp is another sculpture which features a bas relief depicting three links of a chain held together by bars in between. This signifies the unity among the prisoners, many of whom were left-wing political prisoners who shared the same beliefs. On the links are enameled triangles in the colors of the cloth badges worn by the prisoners on their uniforms to identify their prisoner classification.

Red triangles were worn by the Communists, Social Democrats and other political prisoners and blue by the foreign workers, mostly Poles, who were brought to the Dachau camp. The Jews always wore two triangles with a yellow triangle on top of another color, usually red which signified a political prisoner.

The German hardened criminals (Schwehrverbrecher), who were sent to the Dachau concentration camp, wore green triangles, but they are not represented in this sculpture. In July 1936, just before the Olympics started in Berlin, 120 homeless bums were picked up off the streets and brought to Dachau. They were designated as "work-shy" and given black triangles, but they are not honored in the sculpture either. Homosexuals, arrested under Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code, wore pink triangles. The homosexuals were classified as criminals and did not receive reparations from the German government after the war.

Brown badges were worn by Gypsies, although the first Gypsies brought to Dachau were arrested for being "work-shy." Jehovah's Witnesses wore a purple triangle. Most of the photographs of the Dachau prisoners on display in the museum show the prisoners wearing their badges on their pant's leg. The prisoners used the badge colors to refer to their affiliation. The Communists were the reds and their rivals, the German criminals, were the greens.

A bar over the top of the triangle meant that an inmate was a second-timer, or a prisoner who had served time in the camp, been released, and had then been arrested again. The Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, were given their freedom if they agreed to sign a paper in which they promised not to distribute pamphlets against the government or if they agreed to serve in the German army. If they broke this promise, they would go right back to the camp, but the second time they would be in the punishment block and would be treated more harshly. The circles in the sculpture represent the circles that were worn below the triangle by prisoners who were assigned to the camp penal colony. These prisoners were assigned to the hardest work in the camps, usually to the rock quarries or the gravel pits. At Dachau, the gravel pit was where the Carmelite convent now stands.

Catholic Church of the Mortal Agony of Christ

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