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The Roll-Call Area
On the roll-call area the prisoners were counted every morning and evening and assigned to their work details. Punishment measures were announced and carried out here publicly to intimidate the prisoners.
The roll-call area was bordered by the maintenance building; to mock the prisoners its roof carried the following inscription: "There is one path to freedom. Its milestones are obedience, diligence, honesty, orderliness, cleanliness, sobriety, truthfulness, sacrifice and love of the fatherland." The prisoners were forced to look at this saying at every roll call.
The more the number of prisoners increased the longer and more exhausting the roll-call procedure became. Dead prisoners had to be brought to roll call and included in the count.
The Memorial Site today reconstructs the former outline of the roll-call area.
“Roll call in November 1938”
The drawing by the survivor Karl Freund depicts a roll call in November 1938 from the perspective of the prisoners. This image is a document of survival and thus counters the staged photography of the SS.
At this time, over 10,000 Jewish men from Germany and Austria were sent to the Dachau concentration camp in the course of the pogrom of November 9, 1938.
