14 survivors of the concentration camp in Dachau attended the commemoration of the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the camp on Sunday. According to the concentration camp memorial, two former US Army soldiers who liberated the camp on April 29, 1945 also wanted to come.
Piazolo: remains of the camp preserved
The Bavarian state government was represented at the commemoration event by Minister of Education Michael Piazolo (free voters). Piazolo emphasized the importance of the structural remains of the camp, since there are fewer and fewer contemporary witnesses. Therefore, it is important to preserve the “remains of the former camp as evidence of Nazi atrocities and give the living a place to physically come,” he said. “Where the event happened, recognizing, understanding, learning are particularly possible.”
The son of a liberated is now President of the Comité International de Dachau
The second keynote speaker was Dominique Boueilh, President of the Comité International de Dachau. The international camp committee represents the prisoners locked up in Dachau, who come from numerous countries. Dominique Boueilh’s father was once deported from France to Dachau, where he was liberated by the Allies in 1945.
Dachau was one of the first Nazi concentration camps
The concentration camp on the outskirts of Munich was one of the first Nazi concentration camps and is one of the best known. To this day, the name Dachau is known worldwide for the terror during the Hitler dictatorship. More than 200,000 people were imprisoned there and in the satellite camps from 1933, at least 41,500 people died there of starvation, disease, torture or were murdered.
Only recently it became known that apparently millions are missing for the renovation of the Dachau concentration camp memorial site, because of allegedly incorrect funding applications from the Memorial Foundation. The urgently needed securing and remodeling of the dilapidated barracks on the roll call square has thus moved a long way off.
Transparency note: An earlier version of the article stated that more than 20,000 people had been imprisoned since 1933. But there were over 200,000 people. We have corrected this.
With information from dpa