During his flight from Dresden to Bavaria, Victor Klemperer stayed at the town of Dachau. Of all his references to Dachau I only included references to the Dachau concentration camp.
- 1943, September 30, Thursday evening toward seven o’clock – Kretzschmar is good; if his behavior is found out, then we’re all in the soup. Kretzschmar’s behavior: he tells us: “I was six years in Dachau concentration camp (Communist, served in the merchant navy; Noack, likewise a sailor and Communist, was in a concentration camp for four years, but Noack is a more disciplined, normal man, a splendid fellow)
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The Jews are together with the Aryans. Ban on talking in the dormitories, one’s only allowed to whisper while working. It’s nice and easy for them to talk about ‘mutiny.’ A squad has to dig a grave, stand in front of it—then the machine gun cuts them down
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The work: turning Dachau Moor into farmland: every day using ax, spade, and saw on a plot 33 feet by 3 feet to a depth of 2 feet. Anyone who doesn’t achieve the target—no matter how old: punishment drill with a sandbag and wrapped in heavy cloths. **p265 - 1945, April 21, Saturday – The girl is—I must say here—a fanatical opponent of the 3rd Reich, and an utterly incautious one. “If you are writing about the language of the 3rd Reich, don’t forget Dachau. Thirteen thousand people have died there in the last three months, most of them of starvation, and now they’re releasing the rest, because there’s nothing left for them to eat. They’ve got to the letter H with the releases.” **p461
- 1945, May 5, Saturday morning. District Office – With the same pride and a degree of bitterness, Frau Steiner said—she was about to cycle for three hours to Neuburg, in terrible weather, to seek information about her husband, since her trip to Aichach had been in vain—she spoke proudly then, of how often her husband, who had been an editor on the Gerade Weg [Straight path], “under Gerlich, the fiercest opponent of the Nazis, whom they beat to death in Dachau” (find out: Who is Gerlich?!), how often he, how often they both had helped Jews, taken people in who had no papers, hidden them, passed them on—”and now he is to suffer, and in Aichach the worst Nazis are still running around free! The Americans have definitely been very much misinformed in many cases!” **p474
- 1945, May 22, Tuesday, seven o’clock, refectory – A small vehicle bore the words: “Alles kaputt.” It probably expressed the same sentiment as the inscription chalked on the wall of a house: “Death to Hitler,” where Hitler probably stands for the Hitler people. On the Feldhermhalle, carefully painted in giant letters: “Buchenwald, Velden, Dachau—I am ashamed to be a German.” It was followed by the name of the author, which I could not decipher. **p488
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The hostel is a Catholic old people’s home, it is said to have 500 inmates, men and women. At the moment it is overcrowded with refugees of every kind stuffed into every comer: Homecoming soldiers, Aryan refugees, Jews, people from concentration camp are all referred here. A proportion of these refugees—they come and go, I rarely know where from, still less where to, because no one can get out of Munich **p489 - 1945, May 22, Tuesday, 8:00 p.m. – (Here I saw the convoy of Poles returning home, a column of 60 to 70 trucks, decorated with flowers, garlands, white and red flags—one truck had a proper Polish coat of arms fixed to the front—black soldiers driving, the occupants, women with brightly colored head scarves, men in the most diverse clothing, the blue-and-white-striped linen trousers of the Dachau inmates among them, one Dachauer wore a top hat with his prison clothes.) **p491
- 1945, May 25, early Friday morning, before seven o’clock – I have seen the greatest mix of people flocking together. Most conspicuous are the Dachau people in their white-and-blue-striped linen. Terribly embittered remarks. I heard the wildest utterances in the Blumenschule dining hall. There a soldier who had been discharged [.. . ]—blond hair smoothly stuck down with grease, spectacles, scrubbed race from Mannheim, work on the Atlantic Wall, abducted by the SS, father in Buchenwald, dead or alive? mother in Mannheim—or where? Himself a senior, wanted so much to study medicine. **p492
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There a soldier who had been discharged [ . . . ] — blond hair smoothly stuck down with grease, spectacles, scrubbed dumb-insolent face—asked what Dachau was all about and what the plans were of the former inmates. He more or less made himself an advocate of the 3rd Reich. Surely it had been “social,” too. What did the two Dachau men think they were going to do now? Reply: They wanted to get home, they knew what they had to do, the camp was staying, now those who had wreaked such havoc on the KPD would be put inside. **p493
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(Now posters on the streets, “Dachau prisoners” should report for examination, if they have suffered injury.) The original comrade of this boy, with whom he is constantly playing cards, is a taciturn, tiny, almost dwarflike man with a curiously pinched idiotic face, which is nevertheless sly-looking at the same time. Also a Jew, it seems. Now a boy of at most fifteen has appeared, very soft features, big eyes, puffy, sickly pale cheeks, quietly cheerful, entirely in Dachau linen. **p493
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The woman said: “What is ‘Gestapo/ I’ve never heard the word. I’ve never been interested in politics, I don’t know anything about the persecution of the Jews …,” etc. Is this true not-knowing or has it come into being only now? Of the Dachauers she always says only: “The convicts,” she talks to them, yet nevertheless keeps a fearful distance. . **p493
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After that, however, she was in police service as a clerk, “but doing responsible work,” “with 190M net” … but quite unpolitical herself, and she had “not known a thing” about it all, and to her, too, the Dachauers are “convicts,” and she is afraid of the Russians, and of Hitler she still says “the Führer.” . **p493
Source:
- ** I Will Bear Witness, Volume 2: A Diary of the Nazi Years: 1942-1945, Victor Klemperer, Publisher : Modern Library; Illustrated edition
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- UK English I Shall Bear Witness: The Diaries Of Victor Klemperer
- Deutsch: Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten: Tagebücher 1933-1945
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