“The unsuspecting prisoners were marched in formation to this room which was supposed to be a shower room. Inside, the ceiling was all fixed with sprinklers nicely polished which had never beem used for water but nice jets of chlorine gas were forced through controlled by an S.S. guard who had a little window through which he could look over the victims without them seeing him … After five minutes there wasn’t one of them alive, or if there were it was just tough luck because all the bodies were thrown in the next room next to the crematory and a minutes they were all burned. That ‘Shower Room’ could hold 250 persons at one crack.”
Except the Dachaua gas chambers were never used....
Leon Morin was there and says they were used.
“By the time that Baracke X was finished in 1943, millions of European Jews had already been killed in the gas chambers at Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor after being transported to the East, and millions more were destined to be sent to the death camps at Auschwitz and Majdanek.”
https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/why-did-the-nazis-build-a-gas-chamber-at-dachau-if-they-werent-going-to-use-it/
Dachau may not have used the “shower room” to kill but the killing and torture did happen.
And is that claim to justify the vile and despicable treatment of those in the camp. I visited the camp 3 times while stationed in Augsburg GE and active gas chambers or not - dismissing it if repugnant.
An overly broad statement.
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.