Digital Studies of the Dachau Concentration Camp

When examining the data, we expected to see patterns of killing, namely that those who were marked as escaped were killed shortly after returning to the camps.  However, this was not the case.  The data shows many escapees went on to live within the camp system for prolonged periods of time after their escape attempt or recapture—some even until the camps were liberated. Further, those who were recaptured were often held at the camp for months before being transferred to Buchenwald or Mauthausen, where they were presumably killed. It is important to note that the prisoners spoken of here were not Jewish; they were instead prisoners being held for various other reasons including: political prisoners, asocials, prisoners of war, race defilement, and other police detentions.   

Another aspect of the picture of Dachau at this time that became clear through examination of the data was the extensive record keeping of escaped prisoners. After an initial escape attempt, their cards were coded with a special symbol denoting them as a “flight risk,” and their movements were closely watched afterward. There is also evidence that suggests that the Nazis went to painstaking lengths to retain all of the prisoners in their charge, as is apparent by the efforts to recapture prisoners, even when they had been missing or on the run for months.  This is further evidenced by the rhetoric employed in the documentation of said prisoners, such as the phrase “does not count towards the status of those on the run,” which is seen in the documentation of assumed prisoner of war, Nikolai Jeroschin.  

The data also makes it clear that the SS transferred prisoners who attempted escape or who escaped for many months to other camps, such as Buchenwald and Mauthausen, rather than executing recaptured prisoners at Dachau. Transferring prisoners required the expenditure of resources, something that the Third Reich struggled with as the war came a close against their favor.  

As previously discussed, although it was apparent that keeping records of escaped prisoners was of high priority to the Nazi camp administration, this was only the case as it pertained to non-Jewish prisoners. As is evidenced in the testimony of many from the Shoah Visual History Archive, not only were Jewish prisoners not spared an immediate death upon their recapture, but they were also not counted among the documentation of those who had escaped. The lack of effort demonstrated to retain records of escaped Jewish prisoners in the same detailed way as other prisoners was yet another demonstration of the devaluation of Jewish lives.

Between Liberation and Murder: French Resistance

This case study outlines the arrest, detention, and fate of seven French resistance fighters.

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The Dachau Concentration Camp system started out as a prison complex used by the Nazis to hold political prisoners. Throughout the course of the 13 years the Third Reich controlled the camp it expanded both in the number of prisoners as well as in the ways it was used to carry out the murderous vision of the Nazis. This visual analysis project does not reflect every prisoner held at the Dachau Concentration Camp rather it continues the work started by the Joyce Field, Peter W. Landé, and Nolan Altman who worked to digitize the Dachau section of the Captured German Records Collection. Their project can be accessed through the JewishGen database website www.jewishgen.org. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum also cross-references these records with the Memorial Archives where more information about many of the victims listed in this database can be found.

“Race Pollution”

Though humiliation was often utilized in the punishment of rassenschander, many offenders were taken to concentration camps like Dachau in 1938.

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