What was it really like in Dachau? Ask the Jews!

A regular reader of this blog, who has his own blog here, recently wrote in a comment that “Dachau was THE HILTON of KZ Camps.”  Not according to the Jews who were sent to Dachau on November 10, 1938, following the pogrom known as Kristallnacht. (Pogrom is a Polish word which means an event in which ordinary citizens use violence to drive the Jews out.)

Photo on display in Dachau Museum was taken in 1936

This quote is from David Solmitz, the son of Walter Solmitz, who has written a book about his father.  You can read the full story here:

Solmitz said when his father was arrested Nov. 10, 1938, in Munich, he correctly predicted that things would get worse.

Walter Solmitz detailed that he and the 200 others in his barracks were awakened day after day at 4:45 a.m. to face hours of degradation, threats, chores, roll calls and marching. Many collapsed and suffered from frostbite. Punishment, he wrote, consisted of isolation in darkness, being hung upside down from a tree for several hours and being struck with a cane.

Walter Solmitz believed that six men in his barracks died during his six-week imprisonment. Walter Solmitz was released Dec. 21, 1938.

Walter and his wife, Elly, who was instrumental in freeing her husband, made their way to the United States and eventually to Brunswick.

Elly Solmitz was “instrumental in freeing her husband” because she arranged for the family to leave Germany. Approximately 30,00 Jewish men were arrested on the night of November 9, 1938, allegedly for their own protection, and taken to the 3 major concentration camps in Germany, including 10,911 who were brought to Dachau and held as prisoners. The majority of these Jews were released within a few weeks, after they promised to leave Germany within six months; most of them wound up in Shanghai, the only place that did not require a visa, because other countries, except Great Britain, refused to take them.

Kristallnacht was the night that German citizens smashed windows in Jewish shops and set fire to over 200 Jewish Synagogues throughout Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland in what is now the Czech Republic. Ninety-one people were killed during this uncontrolled riot which the police did not try to stop. That night, Hitler and his henchmen were gathered at the Bürgerbräukeller, a beer hall in Munich, celebrating the anniversary of Hitler’s attempt to take over the German government by force in 1923; Hitler’s failed Putsch had been organized at the Bürgerbräukeller.

Joseph Goebbels made a speech that night at the beer hall in which he said that he would not be surprised if the German people were so outraged by the assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by a Polish Jew named Herschel Grynszpan that they would take the law into their own lands and attack Jewish businesses and Synagogues. Goebbels is generally credited with being the instigator of the Kristallnacht pogrom.  

Jews were sent to Dachau after Kristallnacht in 1938 and released weeks later

According to an article in the Sacramento Bee, which you can read here, there were 70,000 Jews rounded up on Kristallnacht, which was the night of Nov. 9th and 10th in 1938; the Jews were sent to concentration camps, including Dachau.  Kristallnacht is considered by the Jews to be the start of the Holocaust. Prior to that, there were no Jews sent to the concentration camps just because they were Jews, although Jews had been sent to the camps for other reasons.

Jewish men in Baden-Baden were arrested on Nov. 10, 1938

This travesty, which was named Kristallnacht by the Nazis, took place after a three-day death watch over Ernst vom Rath, a diplomat at the German embassy in Paris who was shot by Herschel Grynzspan, a 17-year old Polish Jew. Herschel had fled to Paris when the Nazis announced in October 1938 that all Polish Jews in Germany would be deported back to Poland. The Polish government had already torn up their passports when they evicted them earlier and they would not allow them back into the country. Grynzspan’s parents and sister were forced to live in a refugee camp on the border; his motive for killing vom Rath was to call the attention of the world to the plight of these stateless Jews.

The Dachau Museum puts the number of Jews that were sent to Dachau, following Kristallnacht, at exactly 10,911. According to the Museum, another 20,000 Jews were sent to Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen with 10,000 being sent to each of these camps.  

Kristallnaht on Nov. 9, 1938 and what happened just months before this date

One of my favorite web sites is suite101.com.  Today I read an article on suite101.com about “what Kristallnacht means to the Jews” here.  Kristallnacht needs no explanation; most people know about it — unless they have been living in a cave somewhere for the last 70 years.  But how many people know about the Evian Conference that was held in July 1938, just months before the pogrom known as Kristallnacht took place on Nov. 9th and 10th in 1938.   

Nov. 9th and Nov. 11th, important dates in history

Two very important dates in world history are Nov. 9th and Nov. 11th.  I let both of those dates go by without blogging about what happened on those dates.  Why?  Because I thought everyone knows by now what occurred on those dates and there was no need for me to write about it.  I was wrong!