Infirmary (Dachau Concentration Camp)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The sick bay of the Dachau concentration camp , also known as the Revier or prisoner hospital , comprised two barracks in 1937. The SS began to expand it from 1939. In the last years of the war it extended to 18 barracks, also called blocks.

Dachau was the prototype for later concentration camps. In other camps the spatial situation and the organizational process of the districts were similar, but Dachau had a "showcase area".

Showcase barracks

The first two barracks (No. A and No. B) were solid and modern for the time. These two blocks served the facade ( Potemkin village ) and were shown when - selected - visitors were given an appointment to view the camp. In these showcase barracks there were two operating theaters, one septic and one aseptic. Devices such as an electrocardiograph and X-ray machine were available. A large outpatient clinic , as well as an outpatient clinic for eyes, an outpatient clinic for ear, nose and throat diseases and a dental department were set up. There were also rooms such as the office, the bathroom, a diet kitchen and finally two or three rooms with normal hospital beds and bedside tables. Great attention was paid to order and hygiene.

An anamnesis was always taken when new inmates arrived . The SS presented these mountains of files to the visitors as supposed evidence of exemplary medical care. In reality, the files were used to record the gold teeth, to select them for medical experiments or for cases that seemed pathologically interesting.

Personnel structure

An SS chief physician was in charge of the infirmary. For each department, SS doctors in this concentration camp were subordinate to him , mostly graduates of the short medical courses at the SS Academy in Graz. Due to the war, there was an increased need for surgeons, so that internists and dentists also learned to operate. The SS doctors were consistently supporters of racial theory. They had an impersonal relationship with the inmates; they were treated “like material” that was suitable for experiments and for the armaments industry. Compared to other SS personnel, they were relatively calm towards the prisoners. Via the food allocation system in the concentration camp, the SS doctors had butter, milk, eggs and other food for their own use at the expense of the prisoners. They left tasks such as “professional” killing by injections to prison functionaries or the NCOs of the SDG. The SS doctors then issued the death certificate.

Revier Kapo was the prisoner Josef Heiden , he regularly carried out executions. Numerous doctors were among the prisoners, but they were mostly denied work in the infirmary. Kapo Heiden decided who was allowed to work in the area. "Head nurses" were entrusted with the management of individual departments, Heiden usually chose prisoners who had no medical training as nurses and head nurses.

Scabies epidemic

At the beginning of 1941, a scabies epidemic affected around 4,000 to 5,000 people in the camp. Two barracks were converted into insulating blocks, the furnishings were removed, only straw sacks were left in the rooms. The sick were only allowed to wear underwear and had to take part in roll calls (prisoner counting on the roll call square ) twice a day, wearing scanty clothes . A so-called “dross diet” consisted of reducing the food rations (only a quarter of bread and coffee, or water with a little semolina or sago). With icy January temperatures, a whole block had to go to the bathrooms once a week as a closed group. Prisoners were given hot showers and the healthy were taken out of service. The whole group had to wait for hours in the sleet until the procedure was completed. The death rate, among other things from hunger, physical weakness and mostly pneumonia, was very high.

The Polish Cardinal Adam Kozłowiecki noted on February 4, 1941:

“Those with scabies look terrible. They were taken to the bathroom again today at minus 25 degrees [...]. Yellowish skeleton with large, sad eyes. They looked at us. Some glances expressed plea for help, others utter apathy. It is incomprehensible that something like this can happen in the heart of Europe in the twentieth century. "

Medical test series

Not all of them, but some medical experiments took place directly in the prison hospital. For example, there was the phlegmon department ( phlegmon test series ), the department for TBC patients ( TBC test series ), and other test series.

Death chamber

A death chamber was located in the back part of Block B. Illustrative material for numerous institutes and schools was made from the corpses: skeletons, skulls and various pathological specimens. SS leaders sometimes wanted a skull for their table, or a table lamp made of tattooed human skin.

On September 23, 1940, Himmler had ordered that the dead have their gold teeth removed. The number of gold teeth removed had to correspond to the medical files of an inmate, which had been drawn up on arrival at the camp. The death books of a concentration camp abbreviated the respective findings as follows: GZ, MZ, 0, o. B. (gold teeth, metal teeth, zero, no findings).

SS Brigadefuhrer August Frank ( WVHA ) reported on October 8, 1942 that 50 kg of broken gold had already accumulated. It was an amount that would meet the SS's estimated dental needs for about five years. Frank asked Himmler's approval whether further dental gold could be forwarded to the Reichsbank in the future . A current account was opened at the Reichsbank to finance the SS operations. The dental gold from the concentration camps, jewelry and valuables from confiscated, Jewish property, etc. were forwarded to this account.

literature

  • Stanislav Zámečník: (Ed. Comité International de Dachau ): That was Dachau. Luxembourg 2002, ISBN 2-87996-948-4 .
  • Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.), Foundation Comité International de Dachau: Medicine in the Nazi state. Perpetrator, victim, henchman. In: Dachauer Hefte . No. 4. 1988.
  • Franz Blaha: Medicine on an inclined plane. Czechoslovak edition: Medicina na sikmej ploche. 1964.
  • Nicolas Pethes, Birgit Griesecke, Marcus Krause, Katja Sabisch (eds.): Menschenversuche: Eine Anthologie 1750-2000 . Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-518-29450-5 .
  • Barbara Diestel, Wolfgang Benz: The Dachau Concentration Camp 1933-1945. History and meaning . Ed .: Bavarian State Center for Political Education. Munich 1994, Das Krankenrevier ( km.bayern.de ( Memento from December 4, 2005 in the Internet Archive )).

Footnotes

  1. ↑ The infirmary. In: Stanislav Zámečník: That was Dachau. Luxembourg, 2002, pp. 159–170.
  2. ↑ Zámečník reports here from his own perspective, he was a nurse in the Dachau infirmary - source: Stanislav Zámečník: That was Dachau. Luxembourg, 2002, p. 160.
  3. ↑ With the exception of Dr. Eisele yelling at prisoners, kicking them.
  4. ↑ Abbreviation according to Zámečník, p. 160: SDG = medical grade, NCOs of the medical service of the SS.
  5. ↑ Number according to Karl Zimmermann, former head nurse in the infection department. Interrogation of April 12, 1947. Brachtel-Zimmermann trial. Case No. 000-50-2-103. Protocol, pp. 498-503. Archive Dachau
  6. ↑ Adam Kozłowiecki: Ucisk i strapienie. Pamiatnik Wieznia 1939-1945. Krakov 1967, p. 251. In Zámečník, p. 163.
  7. ↑ In Buchenwald, u. a. "Shrunken heads", modeled on Polynesian cannibal tribes. In Auschwitz u. a. Detainees' hair is collected to be recycled.
  8. ↑ Source: Interrogation of the chief dentist Pook from the SS medical office. SUA Praha, NOR 4 G, 4048.
  9. ↑ Document: Dachau Archive: DA-1669/1.
  10. ^ From: Zámečník, p. 167.