I was in Dachau for ten weeks in all, that is from 10th November 1938 to 18th January 1939, when I was released on the basis of a Vorvisum to Panama.
On the morning of 10th November I was taken from home, with my brother, by four people from the Gestapo. We arrived in prison and stayed there from Thursday until Tuesday. During this time our particulars were taken, but the reason for our detention was not explained to us in any way. There were five people to a cell. On the Tuesday we were taken into the yard where around 400 Jews had assembled to be taken away, of whom a great many were in their 50s or 60s. Then we were driven by bus to the railway station – the station and the streets were strictly cordoned off. We then travelled in a special prisoners’ train to Dachau. There the escorting Gestapo officers told us that we should not get too upset about the reception which was awaiting us, it was the worst thing that was going to happen. There then followed straight away the command “Jews out!”. SS men with steel helmets and carbines appeared, searchlights shone, the carbines were drawn. We had to fall in and move at the double to the goods train that was waiting for us, while ceaseless blows with rubber truncheons and rifle butts rained down, even on those who had fallen. We were then loaded into cattle trucks – there is no other way of describing the way in which we were flung into the wagons – and the journey began with 250 people in each truck. We were threatened at the outset that we could even be shot if we looked out of the truck. Many people fainted because we were standing so tightly pressed up against each other.
On arrival at the camp itself the searchlights shone so brightly that we were almost blinded. We had to move at the double to a particular assembly point. Many people just lay on the ground, what happened to them I do not know. We now had to remain standing for two hours in the fog, wet through with sweat. We then went in a group of 800 into a room, and then one by one into an adjoining room where we were to spend the night on damp sacks of straw. We received a little tea and bread. But sleep was out of the question because we were lying so closely packed together that our heads were between the feet of the man in front. At 5 o’clock we had to get up and fall in. By this point two of our people were already exhausted.
We were then photographed and taken to be washed. SS men were in charge, they questioned us there and squirted water into our open mouths with a hosepipe when we tried to reply. At 7 o’clock there was some food, insubstantial and not very much of it. In the dormitory there were 200 of us lying on straw, not straw sacks, and of course there were no bedclothes of any kind. We each received one blanket, which of course was not enough against the extreme cold that soon set in. There was Exerzieren every day. Appell was at 6 o’clock, then Exerzieren from 8 to half past 11, then a meal, then we had to stand for an hour, with Exerzieren again from 2-5 and then from 5-6 there was a Zählappell. On Sundays we often had to stand to attention for 6 hours without any exercise at all while the SS just “pestered” us.
We received only a quarter of a loaf a day. That went on till Christmas! Then there was no work because of the frost, and we just had to stand all the time, on one occasion, because one of us was missing, for two and a half hours in 18 degrees of frost in cotton drill suits. The Appelle went on unchanged after Christmas – all the sick had to be there, including those with lung ailments. It regularly happened that sick people died during Appelle. I remember one incident in which a Jew with a fever of 40 degrees had to appear at an Appell in these circumstances with pieces of wood that he had tied under his feet. There were 13,000 Jews and 4,500 Aryans in the camp. The oldest were 84 and 87 years old. 40 people died on one day.
At first you could buy all sorts of things in the canteen, then after Christmas there was nothing worth having, for Jews there was absolutely no bread and no butter any more. On the days when money had come for us we could only get 6-Pfennig cigarettes.
We did no more work after Christmas, it was just constant cleaning. The slightest untidiness or spot of dirt was strictly punished, e.g. with eight days of scrubbing the latrines or carrying food. One day, because a towel was not completely clean, 150 people had to hold their towels motionlessly out in front of them with outstretched arms for hours on end. On another day we had to stand upright from 8-6 without food beside the so-called Jourhaus. Then there was the punishment of Baumhängen, in which our chained hands were fastened to a tree so that we swung in the air. The punishment consisting of 25 strokes was carried out in the punker prison by a sex killer who had been released from jail.
One day when one of the walls of our barrack cracked because of the cold we had to pay for the repair. We also had to provide materials such as soap, scrubbing brushes, cloths etc. that we needed to keep the barrack clean, but we were never allowed to go to the counter. In the washroom we were only allowed to appear when stripped to the waist. One day a Viennese journalist, A. (55 years old), stayed on in the washroom and put his shirt on, when an SS man went up to him, punched him in the face and threw [him] onto the stone floor so that two of his teeth were missing afterwards. He then had to make a written statement that his injury resulted from an accident. The doctor in the Revier hardly ever bothered to check.
There were frequent foot inspections, as well as towel inspections and checks of razors, toothbrushes, soap and so on. Every day at the foot inspection it happened that the SS men stamped on feet with their nailed boots when they did not like something.
Everything that was bought had to stay in the camp. Because it was bitterly cold in the wooden barracks we were never able to undress and had to sleep in the same clothes and on increasingly rotting and damp straw for the ten weeks. One day two Aryans escaped and one was discovered after a short while, tied by the feet and dragged into the camp behind a motorbike, where he obviously arrived dead. Until these two people were found we had to stand outside in the cold of the camp.
During my time in the camp my hair was cut four times. On my release I was told that we were not allowed to say anything about our experiences and the organisation of the camp. We could do so abroad, but nobody would believe any of it.
