The story of this place
Opened on 22 March 1933, weeks after Hitler took power, Dachau was the first Nazi concentration camp and the model on which the entire system was built. Its commandants trained the SS men who would run Auschwitz and the rest. Over twelve years more than 200,000 people from across Europe were imprisoned here — political opponents, Jews, clergy, Roma and others — and at least 41,000 died from starvation, disease, execution and medical experiments. The wrought-iron gate still bears the cynical slogan 'Arbeit macht frei'. American troops who liberated the camp on 29 April 1945 found stacks of unburied dead and a train of corpses at the siding. The site is now a memorial and place of learning.