One of the readers of my blog mentioned Sybille Steinbacher’s account of the libertation of Dachau.
I wrote about Steinbacher on my website years ago. The following information is from my scrapbookpages.com website:
According to Sybille Steinbacher, who wrote a book entitled “Dachau: The Town and the Concentration Camp,” the US Army commandant of the town, after the liberation, spoke angrily to the 30 Dachauers on the day that they were brought to see the Dachau concentration camp. He told them, “As punishment for the brutality that the town tolerated next door to it, it should be sacked and turned into ashes!”
The town priest, Father Friedrich Pfanzelt, who was among the visitors, pleaded with the Americans not to destroy the town. In a series of articles in 1981, a Dachau newspaper named the Dachauer Nachrichten wrote about how the priest saved the town: “On his knees, the prelate pleaded for mercy for Dachau.”
According to Peter Wyden, author of “The Hitler Virus,” 90 percent of the residents of Dachau were Catholic. Regarding Father Pfanzelt, Wyden wrote: “Then, from the pulpit of his St. Jacob’s Church three days later, the priest set in motion Dachau’s great trauma, the protestation of innocence, the denial of guilt that would never leave the community.”
Of all people, Father Pfanzelt should have been aware of the atrocities committed inside the Dachau concentration camp. According to Wyden, “For years the SS had extended him the privilege of conducting Sunday services in the KZ. And he had reciprocated with many ingratiating letters (which Steinbacher found) and had taken pride in his cordial relations with most of the camp commandants.”
Father Pfanzelt died in 1958 without ever confirming or denying that he had saved the town from the wrath of the Americans.