International Monument at Dachau

The International Monument at the Dachau Memorial Site was formally dedicated in September 1968. The photo above shows the sculpture created by Nandor Glid.

The sculpture is made of dark bronze. It features short strands of barbed wire on which skeletons are hanging with their heads dangling sharply. On either side of the sculpture are concrete fence posts which closely resemble the ones actually used to support the barbed wire fence around the camp. Underneath the sculpture are the dates 1933 - 1945, the years that the camp was used as a concentration camp for anti-Nazis.

Between 1945 and 1948 the Dachau camp was used as a prison for suspected German war criminals, and from 1948 until late 1965, it was a camp for homeless German refugees who had been expelled from the Sudetenland in what is now the Czech Republic. By 1960, construction had begun on the Memorial Site in honor of the anti-Nazis, while the homeless Germans were still living in the old barracks.

A competition among artists who were concentration camp survivors was announced on New Year's day in 1959 to find a suitable design. Forty-five of the 63 entries were exhibited in November 1959 at the Ministry for Health and Family in Brussels. The final decision to choose the entry by Nandor Glid was made by Albert Guerisse, a Belgian Communist who was imprisoned at Dachau after he was captured while working as a spy for the Britrish SOE. Guerisse was the President of the International Committee which planned the Memorial Site.

From below, you can see that the sculpture by Nandor Glid is not flat, but has a depth of about four feet. Notice the hands of the skeletons which resemble the barbs on a barbed wire fence. The sculpture is approximately 48 feet wide and 19 feet tall. It symbolizes the emaciated bodies of the prisoners who died of hunger and disease in the camp.

When the Dachau concentration camp was in operation, the area where the International Monument is located was covered with grass and there was a flower-lined path from the roll-call square up to the service building. As shown in the photo below, the former path is now covered with squares of marble and the grass and flowers have been replaced by a ramp with a zig-zag border around a field of gravel. A wall in front of the museum, at the south end of the path, is the base for the sculpture done by Yugoslavian artist Nandor Glid. This wall obstructs the entrance to the Museum and visitors have to walk across a field of gravel and go around the sculpture to gain entry.

 

The photo above shows the former service building, which is now a Museum, with the sculpture by Nandor Glid on a wall in front of it.

A symbolic cornerstone for the International Monument, incased in Plexiglas, was laid in 1956. The inscription under the glass reads "This first stone of a monument to be erected in memory of the victims of Nazism who died in the Dachau prisons in the years 1933 - 1945 was set here on 9 September 1956."

The monument covers a large area and includes a short wall, inscribed with the words "Never Again" in five languages, on the east side of the vast field of gravel. On the west side of the gravel bed, near the gatehouse, is another larger wall whose inscription in English reads "May the example of those who were exterminated here between 1933 and 1945 because of their fight against National Socialism unite the living."

When the camp was in operation, the Museum building behind the sculpture had these words painted on the roof: "There is one road to freedom. Its milestones are: Obedience, Diligence, Honesty, Orderliness, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Self-Sacrifice, and Love of the Fatherland." Needless to say, this Nazi slogan has long since been removed, along with almost all other vestiges of Nazi ideology in the camp. The design of the International Monument is the exact opposite of what the Nazis would have designed and, as such, it represents a protest against the Nazi regime.

More photographs of International Monument

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