Partially incorrect, Dachau was not an extermination camp, but they built the prototype gas chambers there and tested them out, if I understood the guide correctly, they periodically tested modifications and updates as well. So while they did gas people there, it was not systematic.
However, over 30,000 people died in Dachau, mostly through brutality, neglect, starvation, and simple indifference to human suffering. You don’t need systematic execution to be a Nazi horror.
We visited Dachau about 18 months ago, once you see something like that place, you don’t forget. Virus permitting, my wife and I want to visit Auschwitz before we return home.
No argument from me. But the soldiers description was a case of hearing something, it gets embellished and passed on...with 3 teenaged daughters I am quite “sensitive” to it!
In my earlier post of my visit to Dachau in 1953 I need to mention my recent You Tube “visit”. It showed a glossy image of the camp. It is a shameful PR version
Germans preferred to do the mass killings in the East away from the German population.
The NKVD converted Buchenwald into their own prison with pretty much the same conditions after the war.
I remember seeing plans for a crematorium. The drafter bragged at how efficient it was as it channeled melted fat from the corpses back into the furnace, saving fuel.
I read that and wondered how anyone brought up in the West could calmly sit down and design something like that, let alone brag of its efficiency.
Had I run into that person, I would have had no qualms in cold bloodedly executing him.