On April 29, 1945, soldiers from the U.S. Seventh Army’s 45th Infantry Division arrived at Dachau, the first concentration camp established by the Nazi regime. What they found inside would shock even the most hardened combat veterans.
The air was thick with the stench of human excrement and decaying bodies. Many soldiers vomited or broke down in tears as they came upon dozens of railroad cars filled with thousands of dead bodies. Inside the camp, roughly 30,000 survivors moved like walking skeletons, many suffering from typhus and severe starvation.
The camp’s commandant, Martin Weiss, had already fled before the Americans arrived. But SS guards remained, and some in the gate tower opened fire on the liberating troops. When the Americans returned fire, the guards came down with their hands raised in surrender.
The anger among the liberators did not fade. As they pushed deeper into the camp, they found more dead bodies, often naked and stacked on top of one another like firewood. In response, the U.S. soldiers ordered the surrendered SS guards to line up along a wall in the coal yard near the guard tower. They were shot in revenge.
The prisoners also took their own retribution. Many had lost family members. Some had watched their wives abused and raped. Others had witnessed SS members throwing small children into the air while others shot at them as a form of target practice. Many had seen friends die of starvation or during the brutal death marches that took place shortly before liberation.
Some inmates had sworn that if they ever had the chance to kill their SS guards, they would not hesitate. They kept that word. Holocaust survivors beat several SS men and kapos to death with their bare fists, sticks, and shovels. One inmate was seen stomping on a guard’s face until he was dead.
Some SS guards attempted to flee by dressing as peasants. They were recognized and killed as well. Throughout this violence, fellow prisoners and American soldiers often stood motionless, watching coldly and without sympathy as revenge was carried out.
Later, American troops forced the German citizens of the town of Dachau to visit the camp and see the conditions for themselves. They were also made to help bury the dead. Many local residents claimed they had no knowledge of the atrocities that had taken place there for years.
To this day, the exact number of SS guards killed during the liberation remains unclear. Estimates range from 30 to 50. Because General Patton, then military governor of Bavaria, dismissed all charges related to the reprisal, no one ever stood trial for the killings.
During its 12 years of operation between 1933 and 1945, approximately 200,000 people were imprisoned at Dachau. Nearly 42,000 of them were murdered.