Brutally Beaten SS Guards at Dachau
- Dachau Massacre & Execution of Nazi Guards - Holocaust - WW2

17 June 2022

Category: World War 2 Other

The 29th of April 1945, Dachau, Nazi Germany. The U.S. Seventh Army’s 45th Infantry Division liberates the first concentration camp established by Germany’s Nazi regime. The soldiers smell not only human excrement but also decaying bodies and many of these soldiers cry or vomit as they find dozens of railroad cars filled with thousands of dead bodies, and 30 thousand survivors who look like walking skeletons. Many inmates are sick and are dying from typhus epidemics and starvation. The soldiers are shocked and angered and the liberated prisoners want their revenge. The brutal response is to come.

Before the US soldiers arrived in Dachau, the camp’s commandant Martin Weiss had already fled. However, there were still SS guards left in the camp. The guards in the camp’s gate tower were even shooting at the liberators. When the Americans opened fire, they came down with their hands in the air. After the SS guards surrendered, the US soldiers further expected the camp. When they found even more dead bodies, often naked, lying everywhere, sometimes stacked on top of one another like firewood, they ordered the SS guards to line up along this wall in the coal yard, by the guard tower and shot them in revenge.

Suffering of prisoners in Dachau

The prisoners themselves treated as nothing but animals all these years, also got their revenge. While all the prisoners lost at least some family members, some of them had to watch their wives being abused and raped. Others witnessed shooting competitions in which SS members threw small children in the air while others shot at them. Others saw their friends die of starvation or during the death marches which occurred shortly before the liberation. Some inmates swore to all that was sacred to them, that if they could ever kill their SS guards, they would not hesitate. And they kept their word.

As a result, once they had their chance, Holocaust survivors had no mercy and beat several SS men and kapos sometimes to death with their bare fists as well as sticks and shovels. One inmate was seen stomping on a guard’s face until he was dead. There were some SS guards who tried to flee dressed as peasants. However, they were recognized and killed, as well. While all this was happening, fellow prisoners and American soldiers alike often stood motionless, watching coldly and without sympathy, as revenge was exacted.

Later, American troops forced the German citizens of the town of Dachau to the camp to see for themselves the conditions there and to help to bury the dead bodies. Many local residents were shocked about the experience and claimed they had no knowledge of the atrocities that had been going on at the camp for years. To this day it is unclear how many SS guards were killed. It is estimated that the number is between 30 and 50.

Because General Patton, then military governor of Bavaria, dismissed all the charges, nobody has ever stood trial before the court for this reprisal. Out of around 200 thousand people who were imprisoned in Dachau during its 12 years existence between 1933 and 1945, nearly 42 000 people were murdered.

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