Prisoners at Dachau taunted by signs…

The first thing that visitors to Dachau are told by their tour guides is that the prisoners were taunted by a sign over the gate which said “Arbeit Macht Frei,” which is translated literally as Work makes Free.  Today I read a blog written by Corrine, a visitor who said that her tour guide told her that the “no smoking sign” in the administration building, which is now the Museum, was “put there as a taunt to the prisoners who were not allowed cigarettes.”  You can read Corrine’s blog here.

"Smoking Forbidden" sign in Dachau Museum

The photo above shows a sign painted on the wall of the former administration building at Dachau where incoming prisoners were processed.  Smoking was forbidden in this building, but the prisoners were allowed to smoke in other places inside the camp.  The Dachau prisoners were allowed to receive packages from friends and family, so they had a steady supply of cigarettes.  The prisoners were paid a small amount of money for the work that they did in the factories at Dachau and they could use the money to buy cigarettes at the camp canteen.

Corrine also wrote that her Dachau tour guide told her about “the shelves in the barracks for inmates not allowed to have possessions to put on those shelves…”  The photo below shows a Museum exhibit of the lockers in the barracks which had shelves.

Prisoner's locker is shown in Dachau Museum

The prisoners were allowed to have possessions, but they had to line them up neatly in their locker.  In the early days of the Dachau camp, the inmates were treated like prisoners in an army boot camp; this was supposed to rehabilitate political prisoners and get them  to change their ways.  If a prisoner had a messy locker, he was punished by being forced to scrub the inside of the locker with sand paper.

Corrine also wrote on her blog that her Dachau tour guide told the visitors about “The bunker built only for torture.”

The interrogation room in the Dachau bunker

The bunker was the camp prison.  Incoming prisoners who were spies were questioned in the interrogation room shown in the photograph above.  This room is 20 by 12 feet and has three large windows. Notice the radiator for central heating on the wall on the left side. The door on the right was added later so that visitors can now walk into the adjoining room.

A sign in the interrogation room tells visitors that this room had double doors and cavity walls to prevent cries from being heard as the prisoners were tortured. There is no mention of exactly how the prisoners were tortured.

From 1943 to 1945, the interrogation room was the prison cell of Richard Stevens, who was arrested at Venlo in Holland on November 9, 1939, along with Captain S. Payne Best on a charge of conspiring to assassinate Hitler and overthrow the German government. The exhibit glosses over this and does not even mention why Stevens was arrested.

A private room wasn’t enough for Stevens, who publicly complained, after the war, about the treatment he had received at the hands of the Nazis.  Captain Payne Best wrote a letter in which he claimed that Stevens got better treatment than he did.

Nerin E. Gun, a journalist who was a prisoner at Dachau, wrote a book entitled “The Day of the Americans,” published in 1966, in which he said that Captain Sigismund Payne Best was the most privileged of all the privileged prisoners. The following quote is from his book:

Captain Best, who was fifty at the time of his arrest, had all the leisure he wanted in prison and was even allowed a typewriter. He was able to write a book in which he related all the tiresome details of his captivity. But he carefully avoided explaining what he was really doing in Holland at the time, or how much, if at all, he was implicated in the unfortunate affair at the Burgerbrau.

[…]

Best himself, in his book, admits that if he had remained free he would have known greater deprivation in wartime England, not to mention the risk of being buried under a German bomb.

According to Nerin E. Gun’s book, Captain Payne Best was allowed to keep his monocle and his personal possessions while in prison and he was given a radio capable of receiving London broadcasts. All the prisoners in the bunker were fed from the SS kitchens, but Captain Payne Best was given “double the normal SS ration of food,” according to Gun.

Of course, the tour guides don’t tell visitors the truth about how the Dachau prisoners in the bunker were really treated.  And they don’t tell tourists about who was really tortured in the bunker.

Here is a quote from the testimony of Johann Kick, the head of the branch office of the Gestapo at Dachau, when he was prosecuted by an American Military Tribunal in 1945:

Q: Now, Kick, for the court, will you describe the treatment which you received immediately following your arrest?

A: I ask to refuse to answer this question here in public.

President: The court desires to have the defendant answer the question.

A: I was here in Dachau from the 6th to the 15th of May, under arrest; during this time I was beaten all during the day and night… kicked… I had to stand to attention for hours; I had to kneel down on sharp objects or square objects; I had to stand under the lamp for hours and look into the light, at which time I was also beaten and kicked; as a result of this treatment my arm was paralyzed for about 8 to 10 weeks; only beginning with my transfer to Augsberg, this treatment stopped.

Q: What were you beaten with?

A: With all kinds of objects.

Q: Describe them, please.

A: With whips, with lashing whips, with rifle butts, pistol butts, and pistol barrels, and with hands and fists.

Q: And that continued daily over a period of what time?

A: From the morning of the 7th of May until the morning of the 15th of May.

Q: Kick, why did you hesitate to give that testimony?

A: If the court hadn’t decided I should talk about it, I wouldn’t have said anything about it today.

If visitors to Dachau were told the truth, there would be very few visitors. That’s why the tour guides keep adding lies to their spiel about Dachau.

The first lie that all tourists hear at Dachau is about the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign which the tour guides claim was intended to taunt the prisoners who had no chance of being released.  In fact, there were many prisoners who were released from Dachau.

"Arbeit Macht Frei" sign on Dachau gate

Prisoners who were released from Dachau

The photo above shows prisoners who were released from Dachau.  Prisoners who were arrested again after their release wore badges which indicated that they were a repeat offender.

Chart shows badges worn by repeat offenders

The second row on the chart above shows badges with a matching bar over the triangle. The bar denoted a “second-timer” or a prisoner who had been released and was then arrested again for a second offense. These prisoners were isolated from the general camp population and were not allowed privileges. Their work assignments were much more difficult.

In spite of this evidence that prisoners were released, tour guides at Dachau continue to tell visitors that incoming prisoners were taunted by the sign on the gate.