ADDENDUM

The Beginnings: The Concentration camp is Founded

"On Wednesday the first concentration camp with a capacity to hold 5,000 persons is to be erected in the vicinity of Dachau"

(Völkischer Beobachter, Tuesday, March 21, 1933)

On March 21 1933, Heinrich Himmler ordered that a concentration camp be erected at Dachau. This was the beginning of a terror system in Dachau that cannot be compared with any other state persecution and penal system. In June 1933, Theodor Eicke was appointed commander of the concentration camp. He developed an organizational plan and rules with detailed stipulations, which were later to become valid for all concentration camps. Also from Eicke came the division of the concentration camp into two areas, namely the prisoners' camp surrounded by a variety of security facilities and guard towers and the so-called camp command area with administrative buildings and barracks for the SS.

Later appointed to the position of Inspector for all Concentration camps, Eicke established the Dachau concentration camp as the model for all other camps and as the murder school for the SS.

 
Prisoners marching along the camp road, SS photo taken by Friedrich Franz Bauer, 6.28.1938

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