Dachau Leitenberg concentration camp cemetery

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The Dachau Leitenberg concentration camp cemetery in the Dachau district of Etzenhausen has been a concentration camp cemetery for some of the victims of the Dachau concentration camp near Munich since 1959 . The burial site of Leitenberg, originally laid out as a mass grave by the SS in 1945, includes the individual graves of 7,609 concentration camp prisoners after being reburied in the post-war period. The first mass graves at this place have been identified between February 28 and April 27, 1945.

Memorial stone

Mass grave for murdered concentration camp prisoners

At the latest in connection with the decommissioned crematorium , mass burials began on the Leitenberg from February 12, 1945. From February 28 to April 27, 1945, possibly beginning as early as October 1944, eight large mass graves were laid by prisoner detachments on the Leitenberg on the instructions of the commandant's office of the Dachau concentration camp. Up until the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp on April 29, 1945, there is evidence that 4,318 concentration camp inmates were buried there.

Burials after liberation in 1945

After the liberation, Dachau was quarantined by an American order because typhus and typhus were rampant on the premises. Nevertheless, there were further epidemic deaths among the initially surviving prisoners and former prisoners also died as a result of malnutrition. At least until May 18, 1945, a further 1,879 deceased prisoners and Wehrmacht soldiers who had fallen in fighting around Dachau were buried in two additional mass graves.

Between 1945 and 1949

In the immediate post-war period, the camp served temporarily as accommodation for homeless and sick former prisoners and in July 1945 the military authorities established the Dachau internment camp for war criminals with a capacity of 30,000 people.

A report by Bavarian TV shows how a former inmate of the Dachau concentration camp went for a walk on the Leitenberg in August 1949 and accidentally came across human bones that had previously been exposed during sand mining. It then turned out that they had nothing to do with the concentration camp. But this resulted in a public discussion about the neglected state of the actual last "resting place" of concentration camp victims, whose neglected mass grave is known to be on Leitenberg. There, in May 1945 , the US Army had citizens of Dachau buried thousands more corpses from the concentration camp. As early as 1945, the American army and, as a result, the military government obliged the city of Dachau to erect an appropriate memorial for the dead on Leitenberg . But the city had postponed this for years.

Cemetery of honor from 1949

Italian memorial chapel "Regina Pacis"

On December 16, 1949, the cemetery was temporarily consecrated. In 1951 the memorial hall was completed.

The French tracing service had the graves exhumed between 1955 and 1959 in order to transfer the dead recognized as French citizens to France. The remaining dead were reburied on the Leitenberg together with concentration camp victims from some of the abandoned concentration camp cemeteries in Upper Bavaria. On the basis of the logs of the exhumations, a grave list could be drawn up: According to this, over 7,600 dead were buried on the Leitenberg. After the transfers, 7,439 concentration camp prisoners are still buried on Leitenberg today.

The “ Regina Pacis ” chapel was built in 1963 to commemorate all Italians who perished in the Dachau concentration camp and its satellite camps. Almost 1,700 Italians were murdered in the Dachau concentration camp alone. The construction took place on the initiative of the "Association of Freedom Fighters Veneto". On a stone tablet inside the chapel is written in Italian, German, English and French:

“Votive Church. Erected by the Italian people in memory of their dead for the freedom of all peoples. "

According to a document affixed in the church, it serves “to commemorate the 38,000 Italian political deportees who fell for the freedom of all peoples [...] They did not find the peace of a tomb, they did not receive a blessing cross; her mortal shell was burned in the crematoria and her ashes were scattered to the wind ”.

In 1999, a memorial stone for the Polish victims was added.

See also

literature

  • Jürgen Zarusky : The Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial. Notes on the history of a controversial historical site. In: Jürgen Danyel (Ed.): The divided past. On dealing with National Socialism and resistance in both German states. Berlin, 1995
  • Kerstin Schwenke: Dachau memorial sites between forgetting and remembering - the mass graves on Leitenberg and the former SS shooting range near Hebertshausen after 1945. Munich 2012.

Web links

Commons : Friedhof Leitenberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 48 ° 16 ′ 39.1 ″  N , 11 ° 26 ′ 44.6 ″  E

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site: Memorial sites in the area - Concentration camp cemetery on the Leitenberg - Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. In: https://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/ . Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial, accessed on January 7, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Dominik Schenk, Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial, email, January 8, 2020
  3. ↑ a b Guido Hoyer: Dachau, Leitenberg Concentration Camp Memorial Cemetery and Forest Cemetery - Bavarian State Association. In: https://bayern.vvn-bda.de/ . Association of those persecuted by the Nazi regime - Bund der Antifaschisteninnen und Antifaschisten, accessed on January 7, 2020 (German).