Remembering the Liberation of Dachua ... 75 Years Later

Community Columnist

A handful of young United States Marines, along with myself, sat in rapt attention as the old Jewish man implored us to never forget what had happened here. The place was the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, in southern Germany. That scene took place almost twenty years ago.

At the time, I was serving as the Group Chaplain for Marine Air Group 42 (MAG42). One of our squadrons, VMFA-142, the Flying Gators, had been deployed to a German air base just west of Munich. We were there, flying our F/A-18 fighter/attack aircraft, participating in a NATO exercise.

Only a few miles away was the picturesque Bavarian town of Dachau. Despite all of its outward charms, Dachau had been the site of Nazi Germany’s first and arguably one of its most notorious concentration camps.

Dachau’s notorious history

Built in 1933, it carried out its gruesome mission for twelve years, before finally being liberated by elements of the U.S. Army’s 45th Division on April 29, 1945, almost exactly 75 years ago.

Over the years, it was used to imprison and exterminate thousands of individuals. Among them were those deemed a threat to Germany by a paranoid Adolf Hitler and his fanatical supporters, many prisoners of war, and scores viewed as undesirable racially by the Nazi regime, including the Jews.

Prisoners were utilized as slave laborers at factories in the area. Some were even forced to serve as human guinea pigs in various, often grisly, medical experiments.

During its existence, Dachau received a total of roughly 200,000 inmates. Many were ultimately shipped around to other camps. However, over 40,000 of these, one out of every five, were eventually killed there. Their remains were reduced to ashes in the compound’s crematorium and then shipped out to fertilize German farmland.

Dachau had a gas chamber, but it was never used. The fanatical, often sadistic, die-hard Nazi SS guards assigned there were, nevertheless, very efficient in their utilization of other methods of murder. Many inmates were worked to death. Others succumbed to disease due to malnutrition, withholding of medical care, and unsanitary conditions.

Significant numbers died as a result of being subjected to heinous medical experimentation. Thousands more were simply machine-gunned or hanged. The camp also had a reputation of guards actually torturing prisoners for sport.

While at Dachau, some twenty years ago, we stood in the gas chamber and viewed the crematorium ovens firsthand. The entire experience was haunting, unforgettable.

Sparks and the 157th

On a crisp Sunday morning, April 29, 1945, under overcast Bavarian skies, Lieutenant Colonel Felix Sparks and his 157th Infantry Regiment, part of the U.S. Army’s 45th Division, were heading south toward Munich. Sparks and his men had been fighting to liberate Europe for well over 500 days, from the invasion of Sicily in July of 1943 to their current mission in the far south of the German homeland.

The men of the 157th longed for an end to the death and destruction in which they had existed for months on end. Surely it would all be over soon. In fact, unknown to them at the moment, Nazi Germany would surrender unconditionally in only nine days, on May 8th.

As Sparks’ units rolled toward Munich, where they would eventually be positioned at war’s end, an urgent message was received just after 9 A.M. The 157th was being ordered to divert to the outskirts of a town called Dachau, 10 miles north of Munich, where they were to secure a “concentration camp.”

The Russian Army had already liberated several such camps in Eastern Europe, including the infamous complex at Auschwitz, Poland. Only days prior, U.S. and British forces had begun liberating other camps further north in Germany, among which were Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen. At this time, however, Sparks and his men, who had been preoccupied with heavy fighting in recent weeks, had “absolutely no idea” what a concentration camp was.

As the 157th moved in to secure the main Dachau complex, which covered about 25 acres, they encountered little to no resistance. Most of the guards had fled as U.S. forces drew near.

What they did discover, however, was almost too horrid for the human mind to fathom. Thirty eight railroad boxcars, located just outside the walls of the camp, were filled with over 2000 decaying corpses, stacked like firewood in some cases. Within the walls of the compound, more bodies were stacked and strewn everywhere.

Inside the actual barracks area, many too weak and sickly to stand or move about, were thirty thousand living prisoners, including many women. All were emaciated, filthy, and lice-infested. Virtually every man among Sparks’ troops broke down and cried at some point during the day. Colonel Sparks himself vomited at the sight of the corpses in the train cars.

American troops inside and around the camp, despite having spent months witnessing the horrors of war up close, were enraged at what they discovered at Dachau. It was difficult to contain one’s emotions. After the war, many tried to snuff out the ghastly memories that had been created there.

Liberation at last

As the American liberators entered Dachau, they were met with cries of “Long live America” and “God bless America” from the skeletal figures within. Some of the stronger prisoners even managed to hoist a few GIs up on their shoulders. Food and medical supplies were rushed to the area. Even still, inmates continued to die daily, in significant numbers, for some time after being set free. Many were just too sick and weak to survive.

Men of the 157th, who had mostly been fighting just to survive and get back home alive, suddenly realized what they had been fighting for. One of the members of the unit told a war reporter, “I’ve been in the Army for 39 months. I’ve been overseas in combat for 23. I’d gladly go through it all again if I knew that things like this would be stopped.”

As the older Jewish gentleman, himself a survivor of Dachau, talked to me and the young Marines on that beautiful summer day some twenty years ago, he emphasized two things. First, don’t forget what happened here. Remember the Holocaust, Nazi Germany’s systematic genocide campaign which succeeded in snuffing out the lives of 6 to 7 million European Jews.

Then, he implored us, don’t forget your rich heritage as members of the U.S. Armed Forces. Follow the noble example of the men who liberated Dachau, men who fought not to seize and occupy, but to set free .... 75 years ago.