The Dachau concentration camp was the first official concentration camp located in the city of Dachau, located on the outskirts of the city of Dachau, Bavaria near Munich. It was built on an abandoned gunpowder factory and inaugurated in March 1933 just days after Adolf Hitler assumed total power in Germany. On March 22, 1933, the first prisoner transports arrived at the camp.
The leaders of the camp were structured by Heinrich Himmler who was the police president of Munich. He designated Lieutenant General Theodor Eicke to command the camp.
Initially conceived as a place of temporary detention for political opponents of the Nazi regime such as communists, socialists, trade unionists, intellectuals, and others considered "enemies of the state". Dachau became a massive concentration camp that housed more than 200,000 prisoners of all kinds, including Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, disabled or any person who opposed the regime. Prisoners were subjected to forced labor, medical experiments, and malnutrition, among other atrocities leading to diseases and death. It is estimated that more than 41,500 people died in the camp.
Dachau remaining prisioners were liberated by the United States military forces in 1945 at the end of World War II. Nowadays the camp serves as a museum and memorial site to honor the dead and to remind the living.
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