ADDENDUM

Memorial Cemetery Dachau-Leitenberg

From February 28 to April 27, 1945, following orders issued by the Dachau camp leadership, eight mass graves were dug on the Leitenberg located in the Dachau district Etzenhausen. Possibly, as some statements indicate, the first mass grave was already dug there in October 1944, as the crematoria could no longer be operated due to a coal shortage.

There is demonstrable proof that 4,318 dead concentration camp prisoners were buried there up until liberation on April 29 1945. A further 1,879 dead prisoners as well as regular German army troops killed in fighting around Dachau were buried in two further mass graves by May 18, 1945 at the latest.

All the mass graves were exhumed by the French Missing Persons Service for War Victims between 1955 and 1959. After completion of the exhumation, those dead identified as French nationals were transported back to France - the Belgian, Dutch and Italian dead were also taken back. The rest of the dead, together with concentration camp victims from some abandoned concentration camp cemeteries in Upper Bavaria, were re-buried in the Leitenberg cemetery.

The exhumation protocols formed the basis for a grave list: according to counts made by the responsible authorities, a total of 7,609 dead are buried at the concentration camp cemetery Leitenberg, of whom only 204 are known by name.

The Memorial Cemetery was officially opened in December 1949; besides the graves, an octagonal towerlike memorial hall for the concentration camp victims as well as the Italian memorial chapel "Regina Pacis" (1963) are located there. In 1999 a memorial stone for the Polish victims among the dead was unveiled.

Photo credit: Donald E. Jackson, 40th Combat Engineer Regiment

Jewish Memorial

Memorial Wall with names of Jewish victims

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